Abnormal Functioning of Neurotransmitter Systems
by Mystical-Magical-Hormones
Summary: After Rin Matsuoka's third (and a half) failed suicide attempt, he finds a new home in the Iwatobi Psych Ward. During his stay he meets many eccentrics but none so mind bending as the blue eyed schizophrenic who seems to develop something of a fixation with him. Harurin (trigger warning apply: self-harm, paranoia, suicide, hallucinations, and general mental ill-health).
1. Adolescence is a New Birth

The first step began on a ward full of white. White curtains, white bed frame and white sheets, white tiled flooring. So much white it made your eyes burn because the lights were entirely too bright. His eyes were already burning with the fact that they had to open, as he thought they wouldn't have to ever again. He thought he'd finally let it all go but he hadn't.

"You're awake," a woman in a white jacket smiled, a clipboard resting in her gloved hands. He attempted to sit up, his arms scrambling to push his body up but instead he felt a blood rush to his head as he whimpered from the pain on his wrists.

"You've lost a lot of blood," she explained as she pulled up a small plastic chair, shockingly the chair was blue, a drop of colour in the completely clinical white hell. "You're going to be very weak still; you've only just gained consciousness. Do you need anything?"

He opened his mouth to speak and realised how unbearably dry his tongue was. His head ached and he felt terribly shaky.

"A drink?" he managed to say with a slight slur affecting his voice.

"Yes, of course. You've been out for nearly a week, I suppose you would be very thirsty."

"A week!" he gasped and pushed himself up in surprise before yelping from the IV digging into his arm and making him feel sick. He had been asleep, protected only by a curtain of white, wrapped up in white sheets, stationary in an alien bed, for a week. The doctor removed a walkie-talkie from her pocket and asked for a water to be brought up to wing 2-B.

"I want to take a shower," he said.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that right now," she sighed. A nurse strolled passed with a metal trolley which clanged and scratched the floor and the sound rolled through Rin's head dizzily giving him a headache.

"The water, Doctor," the young nurse said. He passed the little plastic cup to the doctor.

"Thank you, Daisuke," she said with a smile, taking the cup and passing it to Rin. The nurse nodded before pushing the clanging metal trolley. "Small sips," she cautioned.

Rin did take a small sip of the water, it tasted bland and coppery yet somehow it also tasted like the greatest thing and he ended up gulping down the entirety of the cups contents, desperate to remove the dryness in his throat. She clicked her tongue as the cup was settled on the bedside.

"I understand that I need to be on suicide watch for the next twenty four hours, right?" Rin asked after lying back in his bed slightly.

"No," she sighed. "No, Rin, you don't," her grip on the clipboard firming.

"Great, so I'll be going home soon, then?"

"This is your third suicide attempt in the last two months, Rin. We shouldn't have let you leave after the second time," she said, her voice growing sterner and her smile creasing into a frown.

"Wait. What do you mean?" He asked.

"The board has discussed your case. You refuse to visit any sort of therapist, you refuse to talk about your feelings, and you aren't getting any better. The only time you aren't a risk to yourself is when you're being watched. I'm sorry to have to say this to you, but you're being sectioned."

He couldn't speak. It wasn't fair. He was going to be stuck in some sort of asylum he was sure of it. He didn't deserve this. It all felt like someone had punched him in the stomach and winded him.

"The moment your mother and sister are out of the house, you self-harm, during school you continuously attempt to sneak out of the building, and you've made five attempts to run away. We don't have a choice, it would be negligent to do anything else. From the moment that you are physically stable you will be relocated to the psychiatric wing of the hospital until you are no longer a risk to yourself or others."

The doctor then got out of her seat and headed for the exit. If he were stable, he would have knocked something over or screamed or something. But in the end he just couldn't fight, he just fell asleep.

Over the next week he saw his family, they had to talk a lot so they knew what to pack. One morning his sister turned up with a white paper bag on her arm. She had a big, somewhat forced, smile as she approached his bed. She tipped the contents of the bag onto the blankets.

Rin was surprised to find it was a large assortment of bracelets.

"Gou, why?"

"Well, since it's the summer, you probably wouldn't want to be in long sleeved shirts all the time, so I thought you could cover up… the scars with these," she replied, looking at the bed.

Wearing bracelets seemed so embarrassingly feminine and he was not feminine, _he had absolutely never ever watched a romance film and cried_. Definitely not… But he could see all the effort his sister had put into it. "Thanks, I love them," he said.

But when that week was over and he was stood in front of the ward, showered, dressed and able to move around without the doctors insisting he be in a wheelchair, a sudden fear struck him and he wanted to bolt. He so desperately wanted to run away. Instead he let the doctors lead him through the white double doors.


	2. Stop Imagining the Scene and Relax

Rin was not sure what he expected the inside of a psych ward to look like. Perhaps a lingering stench of damp and dust filled lightbulbs which covered the room of peeling wallpaper in a dull piss yellow shade. It would feel cold and you would hear creaking floorboards and screaming inmates and the room would be filled with shackles and blood.

Rin did not expect it to be a spacious room which had flowery wall-paper and a bulky TV in the corner of the room as well as a few sofas. The room shared the same old stale clinical smell as the rest of the hospital rooms. It was a little hotter than the other rooms, probably because the windows were shut. The windows were barred from the outside. The only sound was the rattling of the AC and two patients chuckling over a card game. The room wasn't bleak and archaic, instead it was tacky and similar to someone's grandmother's house.

The two patients who were playing cards had begun to argue. The two patients were a blonde boy, who seemed very young, and a boy with glasses.

"You can't have the black cards with the red ones or else Ayano will burn the food again," the boy in the glasses protested.

"No, she won't I always mix these cards up and I don't have burnt food everyday!" The blonde boy argued back.

The conversation continued in such an odd back and forth that it almost made Rin feel dizzy. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned round to see a nurse and a very tall brunette holding his things.

"Would you like to get settled?" the brunette asked. Rin turned back to the arguing boys who seemed to have started to re-arrange the cards alreadu. Rin gave a small grunt and nodded his head before following them.

The brunette began to chatter away about how he was a volunteer at the ward and that he'd been volunteering there for a number of years and knew the layout very well. Rin wasn't really that interested, he just wanted to leave. He hated that lingering clinical stench that pervaded the walls of the whole hospital building.

"We have a point system here," the nurse began. "Your psychiatrist will give you a number of points depending on how much progress you make at each session. Points can also be deducted for self-harm, attempting to abscond, refusing to take medication, skipping meals, etc. etc. Having more points gives you more freedom and privileges for example, someone with one thousand points can go home for a weekend. You generally receive fifty points per session so it would take twenty sessions to be able to get that privilege but it's important to remember you have three to five sessions a week."

Rin nodded, not all of her explanation really sunk in. He just knew that he was stuck here. The dormitories didn't appear very large from the outside. The last door on the right, before the corridor turned left to the bathrooms, was where they stopped.

"Here's your room!" the volunteer announced. The nurse unlocked the door and then pushed it open to reveal the room.

"This door locks? Can I have the key?" Rin asked.

"These doors are never locked whilst people are inside them. Only when they're vacant or if the patient isn't currently in their room, just to avoid… issues."

The room was simple and plain and blank. There was a bed with a mattress on it and a pillow, a small chest of draws, and a desk with a little blue plastic chair (the same model the doctor had sat in when she told Rin he was going to be sectioned). There was a small window at the top right corner, also barred up. It seemed almost pointless to have it there. It was too high up to look out and barred so tightly that it would hardly let in a breeze.

"Can you open my room for me?" a monotone voice asked. Rin turned around and was taken aback to find that a shirtless and shoeless teenage boy had wandered into his room to talk to the nurse. Rin found sort of attractive, because he was _definitely just that comfortable with his heterosexuality that he could admit that another guy was sort of hot._ _Definitely. _

"Could you give me a minute, Haru? I'm showing Rin his room." She huffed. Haru turned and noticed Rin. Rather than answer the middle-aged nurse, he chose to stare gormlessly at the redhead. Rin began to feel self-conscious. He began to fidget, his finger hooking around the bracelet covering his wrist. He felt his face getting hot and he knew he was going red in front of the other boy.

"Makoto, could you give Rin a run-down about the room whilst I take Haruka back?" she groaned.

"Yes, of course," he replied. The nurse smiled before exhaling and turning to the blue eyed boy, she went to take his arm but the boy jolted away and continued to stare at Rin.

"Does he… does he always do that?" Rin asked, finally being able to find something to say about the situation.

"Not really, he usually doesn't take an interest in anything except water," Makoto answered. _Okay then, _thought Rin. Haruka grunted fairly quietly before following the nurse out of the room and across the hall.

"He's a schizophrenic," Makoto added, conversationally.

"Isn't that when you have like two personalities, or something?" Rin asked.

"No, that's disassociate identity disorder. But a lot of schizophrenics have auditory hallucinations which they refer to as having voices in their head," he answered. Rin didn't really care that much though, he just knew that he was going to have a lot of problems with Haruka.

"So, how many of those points does he have?" Rin asked.

"He doesn't have any," his voice held a chuckle but the side of his face pulled in a way which suggest something of an agonised grimace.

"Really? How come?" Rin took a seat on the bare mattress. He placed his elbows on his knees then leaned forward so that his chin rested in his palms.

"Well," the brunette rubbed the back of his neck slightly, "he constantly runs off when no one's looking because he likes going to the swimming pool, they have one here for physiotherapy and stuff but he always sneaks off and goes swimming in there. I also heard that he never gets any points because he's never talked during any session whatsoever."

"And I'm across the hall from him?!"

"Well, he's not noisy. I think… I finish doing volunteer work at four so I wouldn't know if he's loud at night or anything."

Rin fell back on the mattress with a melodramatic sigh. _Great,_ he thought. He had trouble sleeping enough at home. It was always restless nights and dribs and drabs of nightmares and sneaking sleeping pills which don't work anyway. Now he didn't even have his old sheets from home. Speaking of sheets…

"Where are my bedsheets anyway?"

"Well, there are a lot of rules about what patients can have in their rooms… I've got a print out at the front desk but to answer your question, high risk patients can't have blankets until lights out, just in case."

_No fucking blankets, are you kidding me?_

"What else can't I have?" he asked with a frown.

"Well there's quite a few things. There are grey areas, some specific patients can't have certain things because of the risks involved, whereas others can… I'll fetch the print out for you when Nurse Etsuko is finished with Haru."

* * *

Later that evening, Rin sat with a tray of burnt food and a long printout with very fine writing. He had been scrutinising it since he got it and was still shocked by the things he couldn't have. Like headphones and portable electronic devices.

The canteen was spread out sparsely and it had taken him awhile to find a seat. He sat next to a silver haired boy at first but then he looked like he was going to cry so he had to circle the canteen again, somehow finding an empty bench.

Now, he was crunching through the burnt mushy hospital food, minding his own business, when he heard someone clear their throat. _Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit._

"That's my seat," a bland and vaguely familiar voice brushed over Rin's head and that feeling you get when you unknowingly put a wet sock on your foot ran through his body. He wasn't sure what possessed him to preform his next big fuck up because rather than evacuating the table and looking to sit somewhere else, he moved into the next seat. Haruka grumbled but sat next to Rin.

"This is my table," he said. Rin felt he didn't need telling twice and he grabbed his tray and almost jumped right out of his seat when Haruka turned and stared at him again.

"But you have to sit here now, they say you have to," he said. Rin put his tray back down and continued to eat. He noticed that Haruka was pealing the wrapper off an all-in-one nutrition bar. It looked kind of grey but the blue eyed boy showed no qualms in eating it.

"How do you eat that?" Rin asked.

"How do you eat that?" Haru retorted, indicating to his tray.

"I don't know what you mean."

"They could have poisoned it," Haru replied casually, he then took another bite of the bulky chewy block of a nutrition bar.

"I wouldn't mind that," Rin sighed, pushing the food around with his plastic fork. He hadn't been allowed a knife to eat his food with. Though the food was so mushy he didn't really need one.

The rest of the meal continued in an awkward silence. Rin felt like a weight had been lifted off his back once he'd finished the hideous plate of food in front of him. He was about to get up when Haruka caught him off guard.

"You don't remember me, do you?" he asked.

"You were in my room earlier, right?"

"Before then, we knew each other."

He felt a little cornered, and that something bad might happen if he said he didn't. Though there was nothing to remember, he had never met this guy before.

"You don't. Memories are odd like that. If someone played with your memories they could make you think that you'd always known someone and make you think you had memories of them before they did that. Or they could make you forget someone really important."

"I've got to go now," Rin replied getting out of the seat and the schizophrenic huffed slightly. _I've got to get out of here, _Rin thought.


	3. Happy People are Extremely Social

Author's note: Would just like to say thank you for the reads. Also free! and all characters from it does not belong to me. I would also like to explain that opinions shared by characters or attitudes towards certain mental illnesses within this fic are not my attitudes or opinions. I have had to write the attitudes in this way as it seemed more fitting with each character's personality (as well as their own mental illness causing them to perceive things differently).

* * *

Nurse Etsuko told Rin that he could put up posters in his room but he couldn't see the point. He didn't really have posters in his room at home. Though now he wished he did as he was lying in a plain white room with that same awful medical stench in unfamiliar starchy sheets. The pillow felt too thin.

In the end he decided to get out of bed and see if he could find something to do. It was not quiet on the ward. There was yelling, and tapping, and squeaking, and sobbing, and weird whispers, and scratching, and the sound of feet pounding on the ground.

"It's always like this at night."

Rin did_ not _scream like a girl when he realised that Haruka had somehow gotten inside his room.

"What are you doing here?" Rin yelled, once he was sure his heart palpitations had gone down.

"Be quiet, they might hear us," the boy replied, sitting on his bed. Haru was fiddling with the drawstring on his pajama pants.

"You have one of those?" Rin asked indicating to the drawstring with his hand. Haruka stared down for a second before looking at Rin with a puzzled look.

"Doesn't everybody?"

"I don't. They took mine from me when they got here."

"Really?" Haruka had scooted up the bed and moved closer to Rin.

"Yes, they said it was too dangerous for me to have it," Rin replied.

"I can get it back for you."

"What do the voices in your head think you can steal the drawstring for my pants back? Thanks but no thanks, I'm just focused on getting out of here."

"Drawstring?" Haruka mumbled under his breath. "Anyway, why do you want to go?"

"Because I hate hospitals and this room and all these dumb fucking rules," Rin answered. _And you're also weirding me the fuck out._

"But we can be together here."

There was a long silence. The redhead knew his face was flushing again despite the fact that he found what Haruka had said really creepy. The schizophrenic seemed to think that they had foreknowledge of each other, more so he thought they had been important to each other. Rin didn't have anything to say to that statement.

They sat there for a while, Haruka didn't even seem tired.

"Could you please go back to your own room?"

Haru turned to Rin, eyes wider but still not wide enough to actually be classified as wide.

"Why?" It was almost as if he knew Rin couldn't answer to his question.

"I want to go to sleep," at which point a scream, which was one of the many rhythmless beats to the night's soundtrack, was sounded. This particular scream was much more bloodcurdling than its predecessors.

"You can't sleep through this. You'll feel better if I'm with you."

"No, I won't," Rin snapped, though he hadn't meant to. He meant to think it. Either way, Haruka had heard it and Rin lurched back after realising he had vocalised his feelings. _Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit. I'm so fucked. He's going to kill me and eat me or something else really nasty._

Contrary to Rin's assumptions Haruka had lowered his head and moved off of the bed, opening the door and walking out the room, heading for the communal bathrooms. Rin exhaled, relaxing the muscles he hadn't known he had tensed. As he walked over to shut the door, a wave of guilt crashed over him and then ebbed at his side as he realised that Haruka seemed more upset than violent. He decided to turn towards the communal bathrooms when someone grabbed his shoulder.

"Hi, I'm Nurse Katsu, I'm one of the night nurses. I just need to ask, what the noise coming from your room was all about?"

"Haruka came into my room and I told him to leave and he left and he went to the bathrooms?"

The nurse cursed under her breath. "I'll have to go get someone, otherwise he'll be in there for hours," she mumbled.

"Is everything alright?" Rin inquired. _Shit, I fucked something up for someone, __again.__ I'm a failure and an inconvenience. I fucked up killing myself three times._

"Everything's fine, you just need to go to sleep," The nurse replied, momentarily distracting rin from his bout of self-loathing.

"But I can't," Rin whined.

"Okay, come with me I'll see if I can give you something to help."

* * *

The next morning Rin felt more tired than he had before he tried to sleep. All the nurse could give him was a shitty herbal tea since he hadn't had his first one on one session yet and apparently it would have to wait until Tuesday as he was scheduled for group therapy on Monday. Along with this, he kept hearing someone getting out of their room and turning all the taps in the bathroom on as well as someone who kept going up and down the hall turning the lights on and off, on and off, on and off.

Breakfast was hell. Trying to find somewhere to sit in the canteen was so unnerving. He knew that everyone here was "a danger to themselves and/or others." But it was impossible to tell who came under what category. There was a little brunette girl who sat on an alcove in the wall stabbing at her food rather than eating it. It was impossible to tell whether she was here because she tried to kill herself or _someone._

And either possibility made him feel so horribly on edge. If they were suicidal, he felt he had to pick his words oh-so carefully otherwise the patient would shatter because they were that fragile. And in the other situation, say the wrong thing and the patient might attack him or start tormenting him, making his life a bigger nightmare than it already was.

"Hey newbie!" Rin was pretty sure that the owner of this voice, which he vaguely recognised, was referring to him. He looked around and noticed the blonde boy, the one who had been playing with the pack of cards the other day, was calling him to his table. On the table was also the boy with the red glasses, and the silver haired boy who cried/almost cried yesterday evening. Deciding he had nothing to lose, Rin sat with them.

"Hi," he said, settling his bowl of _porridge(?)_ on the table. The boy with glasses made a face.

"You're porridge is _uneven_," he huffed. The blonde boy chortled before then trying to violently catch his breath.

"I'm… sorry?" Rin offered.

"Just eat it quickly and get it out of my sight," the boy sighed. Rin nodded and began eating the tasteless slop.

"Gee, Rei, he just sat down and you're _already _bitching about his food," the blonde said, but he said it with such merriment that it didn't sound as mean as it would have.

"Well, I'm _sorry_ but I don't want Nurse Etsuko to find any of your contraband in my room, Nagisa!"

"Quiet about that! Besides, everyone's porridge here is lumpy, and they don't always find it."

"I told you it's only if I see it!"

The silver haired boy began to squirm away from them as they continued to bicker. The argument seemed to settle down after they realised how uncomfortable he was.

"Anyway, I'm Nagisa," the blonde smiled, "and you, newbie?"

"I'm Rin," he replied.

"That's a girly name isn't it? I'm not really one to talk though. I've got the same name as that protagonist from the anime where the girl goes to the lesbian school? What's it called again? Something to do with strawberries… I think," he chatted very animatedly, unlike most of the patients Rin had seen so far who all seemed as though they were slightly dead inside.

"Oh and that's Rei," Nagisa pointed to the boy with glasses, "and that's Ai," he pointed to the silver haired boy who shrunk in on himself as soon as he heard his name.

"Aren't those also girls' name?" Rin asked.

"I think Ai is unisex," Nagisa replied. There was a pause and then Rei and Nagisa exchanged a glance with each other.

"So what tier are you?" Rei asked.

"Tier…? Um, is that about those points again?" Rin asked. Nagisa shook his head and Rei pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket. The piece of paper had a labelled pyramid on it.

"I grouped people based on how crazy they are and put them into tiers," Rei explained.

"In a descending order, so tier 1 being the craziest," Nagisa began in a specially adapted voice as though he were presenting a scholarly announcement. "Tier 1: schizophrenia and DID, Tier 2: high functioning DID, bi-polar, and body dysmorphia/extreme eating disorders, Tier 3: highly dependent addictions, eating disorders and extreme anxiety disorders, Tier 4: anxiety disorders, addictions, extreme depression, and extreme personality disorders. Tier 5: depression and personality disorders."

_That's kind of… offensive._

"I guess, Tier 5," Rin replied.

"They wouldn't put you in here if you were just a tier 5," Rei retorted.

"So he's a tier 4 in denial?" Nagisa added. "I'm a tier 2 and Rei's a tier 3, and so is Ai."

Rin nodded, he felt as though he needed to get up from the table, all the discussion made his food seem even less appetising. He hadn't wanted to eat any anyway but after hearing that not eating could deduct "points" which gave him privileges, he figured he'd have to. He was used to having to force himself into doing things he didn't care to do anyway.

"So are you here because you're parents want you here, you want to be here, or the doctors want you here?" Nagisa asked. Rin had started to hook his finger around his bracelet again. The two continued to stare at him, pushing him to answer.

"I was sectioned," Rin answered.

"Oh, so you tried to kill yourself? Can't have been your first time, I know, for a fact, that the first time you try to kill yourself, they put you on suicide watch for a week. And you need a pattern of recurring harmful behaviour before they put you on the ward. You must have done something else," Rei babbled. Then he and Nagisa began to discuss different things Rin could have done to get himself "locked up."

The discussion was broken by the sound of something smashing. The canteen fell silent and everyone turned to see that the little brunette who had been sitting on the alcove and thrown her tray to the ground, she then began screaming whilst grabbing a shard of plastic from the ground.

Nurse Etsuko along with a few orderlies came rushing over, the nurse trying to pull out a large needle whilst the orderlies attempted to tame the thrashing beast. A midst the struggle, one of the orderlies hadn't noticed that the girl had picked up the shard of sharpened plastic and was blitzed when she stabbed him in the arm with it. Ai almost fainted.

The nurse managed to wrestle the girl from behind and inject the contents of the syringe into her neck while the wounded orderly howled in pain. The brunette's eyes flickered shut and then the nurse pulled out a walkie-talkie asking for one of the first responders to come and check on the injured orderly.

"That was like watching a train wreck," Nagisa chuckled under his breath. Rin could hardly breath, his lungs felt like they were clenched.

"Well, now I can conclude she does that every time someone new has breakfast here for the first time," Rei said coolly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

_Someone just stabbed someone with a shard of plastic and no one gives a shit! What the actual fuck?!_

Rin couldn't stand it anymore and he leapt from the table and ran all the way out the canteen. He kept going until he reached the dorms and then he sprinted until he found his door. As he jiggled the handle he found the door was locked because he wasn't inside, as protocol stated. Not knowing where else to go, he headed for the bathrooms.

Upon entering them, he immediately regretted it.

Author's note: I would now like to say that after this update, it's more than likely updates will become less frequent as I will be going back to school on the 28th and haven't done any homework yet. In addition to this, it is also now exam season in my year.

I would also like to credit a BBC 3 documentary I watched around a year ago as it gave me a lot of insight to the running of mental hospitals/ psych wards (I think the documentary was called 'The Ward') it also gave me a lot of information about OCD which is the disorder that Rei has in this fic.

The Only Sane One: I have done quite a bit of research about schizophrenia (well at least more than the average person) so I'm attempting to do the most accurate portrayal I can. I mostly use websites for research but I also used a big book about pyschology.


	4. A Man with Conviction isaHardMantoChange

"It was Moriko, wasn't it?" Haruka was leaning by a sink in the bathroom. Rin noticed that all of the taps were running.

"Who?" Rin asked, before walking over to turn off the taps, not wanting to waste water.

"She's little, brunette, screamer."

"Is that a proper sentence?" Rin replied, despite his wish to try and keep a distance between them after the previous night.

Haruka shrugged in response and Rin swore to himself that that would be the end of their conversation. The bathroom was larger than Rin's dorm room, most likely because it had to accommodate for a lot of people. It had showers to the right with benches and racks of towels and lockers. On the left there were toilets. In the middle, where Rin and Haruka were stood, there were sinks with little soap dispensers. Notably, no mirrors, and Rin had wanted a mirror, he wanted to see his own face. It would be a little confirmation that he hadn't changed, that he was okay and it was the situation that was different, not him.

"Want to know why she's like that?" Haruka asked.

"No."

"She has autism but apparently she was abused as a child and someone tried to kill her and now she has brain damage," Haruka said.

"That's… horrible."

"I'm not finished," Haruka frowned. "Anyway, she's lived on this ward since she was thirteen and she never spoke until another girl came to the ward because she had an eating disorder. Then she started talking, to the girl. They weren't friends though. They were lovers. And that's against the rules so they sent the eating disorder girl away, to die probably. And now all Moriko does is scream and try to attack people and sit at the alcove where she first met the other girl."

"Why are you telling me this?" Rin looked at Haruka. Despite the contents of the story, Haruka said them as though they were some yawn-worthy story about how his mum couldn't find a spot to park and he was late for school. _How cold._

"Because I told the head psychiatrist about it and now the other girl is dead and Moriko is evil."

"So you… blame yourself for her violence?"

"I don't like that she's noisy now. She once said she was going to kill whoever told."

"Right, well, she probably won't _kill _you. Is that why you think your food is poisoned?"

"No, I don't trust the staff here because they're all insane and they can't be trusted."

Rin rolled his eyes. Unsure of why he was still in the bathroom, he didn't have the feeling of acute terror lodged in his gut anymore. In fact, Haruka -despite his eccentricities- was not so threatening, just a little odd. _There really isn't anything to be-_

Before Rin could have his epiphany that Haruka was not so bad as all that. The boy grabbed Rin's bracelet and removed it, exposing the still healing cuts. They were aggressive criss-crossing patterns all varying in length and depth but all were wild and vivid and full of aggression. He hummed before Rin ripped away his arm.

"Give me my bracelet back!" Rin yelled.

"Why, everyone's here for a reason, why are you covering it up?" Haruka replied. His eyes focusing on the deadly pattern. "Especially when it's so lovely."

"This isn't lovely! I tried to kill myself and I fucked it up!" Rin yelled. Just seeing the cuts made his stomach flop. _Why the hell did you think you die from those little fucking fairy cuts, look how small they are you pussy! Were you too much of a little bitch to cut yourself like a fucking man? What the fuck is wrong with you?_

"See, you're alive, and now you have a souvenir."

"What the fuck? Just give me my bracelet back."

Instead, Haruka put the bracelet around his own wrist, looking at it in awe. There was probably trace amounts of blood on it. Something in Rin snapped and he pushed the other boy against the wall.

"Give it back!"

"Why?"

"Because it's mine, not yours, you have no right to take it."

"You know nothing," Haruka replied. Rin shoved him again and the smaller boy twinged slightly before sighing, Haruka removed the bracelet. Rin went to snatch it back but then everything went in slow motion as Haruka tossed it to left. The brown patch of leather landed inside a stall. _NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO_

Rin scrambled to the stalls opening each one but after looking on the floor in each, it was plain to see that his bracelet hadn't landed on the ground. On the third stall he realised that it had landed in the toilet. And the toilet was dirty.

"Still want it?" Haruka asked. Rin wanted there to be a tinge of amusement behind his words. However, there was nothing. No sharp angling of his eyebrow, no scowl, nothing in his voice at all. It was a genuine question.

Rin stormed passed him willing himself not to cry, because he shouldn't cry. But he could feel his eyes tingling, and oh god he was crying in front of that crazy asshole. It wasn't like he didn't have other bracelets but it was a gift from his sister and he was already missing his family. And it was all so difficult.

He grabbed his door handle but then remembered it was locked. He was locked out of his own room and he couldn't stop crying. It was so much worse than home and being out of the ward.

"Um… a-are you alr-right?" someone stuttered so quietly that Rin barely realised that someone was talking. When he looked up, he realised that it was Ai.

"I'm fine," he lied.

"If… um you need to… t-talk… you c-can t-talk to me. I'm a… good listener," the silver boy was bright red. He kept fidgeting and his chest seemed to fill and collapse rapidly.

"Are you alright?" Rin asked, suddenly noticing how the boy seemed to be having trouble breathing.

"I'm f-fine just not good at t-talking with p-people, tha-t's all," he stuttered. "W-would you like to stay in my r-room until a n-nurse comes over t-to unlock your um door?"

"So your door isn't locked?"

Ai looked over his shoulder scanning the hallway, eyes darting everywhere. He nodded when he was sure it was empty. He beckoned for Rin to lean closer, which he did.

"They don't lock my r-room because of my c-condition. They s-said when I start to improve th-they're going to start to do it b-but r-right now i-it's too m-much of an inconv-v-venience," he whispered, as quickly as he could, stumbling over his words in a manner that almost seemed over-wrought, like Bella Swann in the Twilight films. A franchise Rin _totally _hated and he had _only_ seen the first film and that was only because Gou had no one to take her at the time. _Definitely._

"It's okay, I can ask the nurse myself," Rin replied. "Uh, thanks though." Ai nodded so hard that Rin was worried his head might fall off.

Group therapy. How did Rin begin to describe group therapy. It was, essentially, nonsense. In his own opinion. No one's problems seemed to correlate to anyone else's. According to Dr Sasabe that was the point. He had always been an eccentric in his profession and he strongly believed his approach to group therapy was a new step in the advancement of mental help. Rin believed it was purely _experimental _and would not work.

The fundamentals of this form of therapy was that it would only work in a situation wherein all participants, except for the doctor, are hospitalised, in the same unit. They had different issues rather than one common one. It was supposed to help patients trust others, know they were trusted, show a different view to what their mind's eye had warped them into seeing, and show them that they could support others. It gave them a sense of independence as well as community in order to make the hospitalisation less uncomfortable.

The floor of people had been arranged in a huge circle, a box of things set to the side. There was also a chair in the middle of the circle. Dr Sasabe seated himself in it.

"Okay, almost everyone is here, and this is the time that group starts… I might as well begin with the following announcement, but most of you already know. Hanako, after her outburst this morning, won't be attending group therapy, she's in the secure unit for now and she probably won't be out for a while, again," he sighed.

Rin looked over his shoulder and noticed Nagisa and Rei were sat next to him.

"Hey, who's Hanako?" He asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Rei replied with a huff. Rin shook his head, eyes searching both boys in front of him.

"She was the girl who stabbed the guard this morning, duh," Nagisa whispered before rolling his eyes. _What? That can't be right?_

"I thought her name was Momoko or Moriko or something?"

"Why would you think that?"

Rin shrugged. Why had he trusted a schizophrenic over something like this? Or anything? _I must be out of my damn mind. Well of course I am, why else would I be here._ The group was quiet, except for some of the people whispering to each other, mostly over who was yet to turn up for the session.

"Now, along with this news, it's probably means that Hanako's previous session with us will be her last session with us. As I know a few of you are close to her, if you want to write any cards, you should probably do that soon, so ask the nurses to borrow paper or if you have any special privileges, you can buy a card."

_Why would anyone be close to someone like that?_ Rin thought._ Then again, no one in here is in their right mind._

"Now, onto business, a lot of you have already noticed that we have a new member in group," Doctor Sasabe began. Rin quickly began internally chanting _"please don't be me" _over and over again despite that fact that it was obviously him.

"Rin, why don't you introduce yourself?" the psychiatrist grinned.

"I'm Rin and I'm sixteen," he said, his face flushing almost painfully. There was clapping from the people in group.

"That's great. Well done, it can be a little frightening on your first day so don't worry, we won't pick on you too much," Doctor Sasabe smiled. _Oh my god, I'm not a baby._

Rin opened his mouth to speak. At that exact moment, the last person on Earth that Rin wanted to see walked in, and he was sporting a rather unhygienic accessory.

"Nanase, late as usual," the doctor said sternly. Haruka took no notice as she stroked the bracelet around his wrist and looked about for a seat. Rin swore that a blood vessel in his head was going to break out of rage. He was going to kill Haruka.

AN: so again I'm just going to mention something important which is that characters' actions are strongly affected by their disorders so a lot will be explained in later chapters.

Chibi Dhamar: Thank you! I will try to update as quickly as I can but I do need support since I, myself, suffer from poor mental health and have trouble staying on top of things and often forget. Also, most of the characters have mental illnesses. Rin has despression, Nagisa has bi-polar disorder, Rei has OCD, Nitori/Ai has social anxiety, and Haruka has schizophrenia. Also, don't worry, I could understand your review fine.

The Only Sane One: Thanks, I'll try and check it out. And thank you for your comments.

Naa-Nanase: Thank you. Their relationship is going to be pretty rocky at first, (like the anime) and it's going to be a system of understanding the way the other acts because of their disorder and so on. Haru's story is going to be crazy sad when it's revealed. He does generally go to the bathroom in times of distress (sadness, stress, anger etc. etc.) however, he doesn't understand that he's doing that because a lot of schizophrenic don't really understand what they feel. Because he has schizophrenia in this fic his reasoning behind what he did in this chapter is really odd. I'll try to explain it better in the next chapter but feel free to try and figure out why. Ugh, I feel so lame for answering something that I should just be able to explain in the actual fic itself.

My next chapter probably won't be out tomorrow because I have three large pieces of homework and I'm going to be at a vintage fair tomorrow, but I'll put one up as soon as I can. Thank you for reading~


	5. There's More totheSurfaceThanMeetstheEye

AN: Ew, back to school tomorrow. After this update the updates are probably going to become extremely erratic so many apologies there.

"Do any of you think you could give Aiichiro some good advice?" asked Dr Sasabe. No one had an answer to Ai's dilemma about seeing his mother again and having to tell her that he still hadn't made satisfactory progress yet.

"Okay, well, we'll talk this evening, then," he sighed. Then he checked his watch, the time was one past twelve and the session had run a minute over time. "Okay group is over, remember take your meds and if you need to talk to me about anything, I'm here."

The patients began getting out of their seats, a low hum of chatter between those stable enough to talk and able enough to make friends in a sea of unfamiliar faces. Rin waited for the bulk of people to leave and then he approached Dr Sasabe.

"Excuse, Dr Sasabe, could I talk to you about the point system?" Rin asked.

"Oh, Rin Matsuoka, the new patient. Yes, you can ask me anything. Doesn't mean I'll answer anything, though," he laughed.

"Right, well, I was wondering how many points I need to get out of here?" Rin asked.

"Whether you go home or not, isn't determined by points, that's more about the trust we put in a patient. A patient may not have made a lot of progress but we may trust them to be able to have a certain liberty. The points are easier to lose than they are to gain, it's more of a carrot and stick approach to dealing with patients, to prevent them from acting out."

"Well, when can I go home?" Rin pleaded.

"When you're ready to go home," the doctor replied.

"When will I be ready? What is ready?"

"When the board of doctors deem you not to be a danger to yourself or to others."

"Well, how do I become that _quicker_?"

"You're pretty desperate to get home. Look, there's no way to speed up the healing process, there only a way to slow it down. Now, who's giving you a hard time?"

Rin's face flickered between a face of shock and a mask of indignation.

"No one, I just want to go home."

"If you want to go home so badly, how come you ran away five times?"

"I was just trying to clear my head, and I could come back any time I wanted then!"

"Rin, I'm a psychiatrist. You'll need to be a much better liar before you can fool me. So tell me, who's giving you a hard time? And before you answer, the only thing you can do to prolong your stay here is not co-operate during this process of healing."

"I don't really want to talk about feelings, it's really…_gay_," he mumbled.

"Well, that's the thing, Rin, everyone has feelings, gay people and straight people, and bisexuals, and asexuals, and every other sexuality. It's not an inherently _gay _thing or a _feminine _thing either. I've worked with enough people to know that gayness and femininity aren't the same. So, like it or not Rin, you've got to talk about what's bothering you, if you want to leave."

"Ok, well, it's Haruka that's giving me trouble. He came into my room the other night and this morning he stole the bracelet I was wearing to cover my scars and he kept talking about them and then he threw it in a toilet and now he's walking around wearing it. I think I offended him in some way and he's got some sort of, I dunno, _vendetta_ against me…"

"First of all," Doctor Sasabe began, "Haruka is a schizophrenic, and believe me when I say that Haruka's schizophrenia is fairly severe, though it is a lot better than when he first came here. He's too lost in his own mind to be holding onto a vendetta with someone he met less than twenty four hours ago. Is there anything you might have done to offend him?"

"Well at dinner he thought we knew each other but he figured out that I don't know him. Also, I…_ implied_ , I suppose, when he was in my room that he made me feel uncomfortable and then he sort of left and went to the bathrooms…"

"Right, I can't tell you a lot about Haruka in particular because of patient/doctor confidentiality but I can tell you that schizophrenics sometimes have delusions which are basically thoughts or things their minds have convinced them are one hundred percent true. Sometimes these delusions are harmless, like "the first flavour of ice cream was bubblegum", or something equally silly. Sometimes delusions are unclear because our decision that it's a delusion would have to be based on someone's own knowledge and even the sanest of people can make mistakes, like the delusion that they had seven lucky pennies not eight. These delusions are… unethical to try and get rid of. It's basically changing someone's mind almost completely and delusions are very difficult to get rid of anyway so we don't think of them as priority. We can and will only work on those which we class as being dangerous, like thinking you can fly or thinking that the man who lives next door is a demon and you're a demon slayer."

"So basically, it's possible that Haruka's deluded about meeting me or that I forgot I met him but either way, you're not allowed and don't have the time to change his mind?"

"Basically. I can have a talk with him about it, if you want. I could make it entirely anonymous."

"How would you make it anonymous, I mean, it's obvious who you'd be talking about."

"Well, I could say I noticed the bracelet and ask him where it came from. Also, I knew about the room thing because the nurse on duty had to tell me, and if worse comes to worse, I can tell him I've noticed he's been fixated with you. So can I talk to him for you?"

It was so childish like telling a teacher someone was bullying you but the difference was that Rin was sixteen, Haruka was practically mentally incapacitated and smaller than him. And he also shoved Haruka against the wall and if he blabbed about that then Rin might get kept here longer and he just wanted to leave.

"If you've reacted badly at all during your conflict, don't worry. We all make mistakes, okay? We just need to resolve this, this isn't like school. People don't get in trouble, so long as they don't do anything like attack someone in a very violent fashion," Dr Sasabe said, as he pulled out his pocket book. His eyes scanned the pages of it whilst Rin made up his mind.

"Okay, Dr Sasabe, you can talk to Haruka about it," Rin replied feeling slightly shaky.

"Great! Oh and by the way, you have your first one on one session tomorrow with Dr Amakata, at one o'clock."

* * *

It was two o'clock in the afternoon and Rin had decided to take a book out of the lounge which was about schizophrenia. He was interested in the illness itself _that's all. _As he turned the page he heard a knock at the door. Curling the corner of the page over, he walked to the door and opened it. Though he was shocked to find that no one was outside his door. He looked around to try and see if it were some sort of prank but couldn't find anyone.

Then he noticed a little envelope with a big bulge in it. He picked it up and was surprised to find that inside it was the bracelet which Haruka has stolen and a small piece of paper. Grimacing at the toilet bracelet he decided to avoid touching it but fished out the piece of paper.

The words on the page were slightly jumbled with a few spelling errors and no concern for punctuation or their area or space. It took him a few minutes to decipher the words on the page. But he figured it out.

_"__rin im sorry i took yor braslit"_

Rin frowned, feeling a pang guilt as he looked at the scrawled little message, especially since he no longer wanted the bracelet since it had kind of been in a toilet and stuff. A thought flashed through his head.

"_No, don't do that!" _ the sensible part of Rin's brain pleaded as his body acted as impulsively and waywardly as it usually did. He grabbed the envelope which still had the bracelet in it, and went out the door. He crossed the hall to the parallel door and knocked. There was no reply.

"Haruka?" he called, no reply. He pressed his ear against the door. There wasn't a sound coming from the other side. He turned to the boys' bathrooms, hoping he wouldn't come to regret this. "Haruka?" he called again.

"Rin?" Haruka straightened up from the sinks full of running taps.

"Do- do you always have these bathrooms to yourself?"

"A lot of people leave when I come in," Haru replied. His eyes seemed really wide at this point in time, unlike before when he looked very vacant.

"I, uh… I got your note and I… wanted to give you the bracelet back," Rin said, stepping towards the other boy. It was a bit of a shock when he started laughing. It was more of a quiet, bitter chuckle and Rin's blood felt like it was complete replaced with the words "oh shit", just a billion exclamations in his body instead of blood cells and plasma.

"You don't want it because I touched. I washed it, but I suppose I did have to touch it again to put it in the envelope," Haruka muttered.

"Oh, uh, no, it was the fact it was in the toilet, it just kind of grosses me out. You seemed to want it, though, so if you want it, you can have it," Rin replied, shoving the envelope towards him. Haruka's eyes seemed to sparkle when he looked up at Rin.

"Like a gift?" Haruka asked, taking the envelope, removing the bracelet and marvelling at it.

"Not really, I mean my sister gave it to me, and then you stole from me, and then you returned and I said I don't mind, so it's kind of like a "I don't care, you can have this one thing from me because you took it but I don't want you to do it again" situation," Rin rambled as he began to turn of the taps. _What is it with the damn taps, seriously? Does he know how bad this is for the environment?_

"Can we just say it's a gift?" Haruka asked, sliding it on his wrist, "I haven't had a gift in a while."

The air felt pretty awkward. Rin looked back at Haru after turning off the last tap and noted a trace of forlornness on Haruka's face, so without really putting a lot of thought to it, Rin leaned over and hugged him. Haruka gasped internally and stayed rigidly still. He felt tingly everywhere because Rin was touching him almsot everywhere and he didn't think he was gross.

Rin, however, did not feel tingly everywhere as he didn't seem to be getting a response and was worried he'd shocked the other into a small coma or _"catatonic state" _(as he had read in his fancy book about schizophrenia). Maybe he'd never been hugged before or something and that's why he had so many issues because he came from a place where families didn't hug their children or show affection. He pulled back and heard Haruka grunt.

"Sorry about that, you seemed upset and I normally hug my sister when she's upset," Rin replied.

"Why did you stop?"

"What?!"

"Why did you stop? Stop hugging?"

"Well, you didn't hug back so I assumed you didn't like it," Rin replied.

"Right," Haruka replied.

"Has anyone ever hugged you before, Haruka?" Rin asked, a teasing tone to his voice which he hadn't meant to add.

"Don't be stupid, you hugged me all the time when we were little," Haruka replied. _But we didn't know each other when we were "little"._

"I know that look. Just because you don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. You're crazy remember," Haruka said.

"That's because I tried to kill myself, not because I have amnesia or repressed memories, or something."

"You wouldn't know if you had repressed memories, memories are knowledge. We know things because we remember learning them."

"Right, well, see you around, Haruka," Rin waved and turned to leave.

"Rin, wait!" Haruka called. Rin hummed and turned around back to the schizophrenic, "Call me "Nanase."

"Isn't it more formal to calling you by your family name?" Rin asked, eyebrow quirked.

"What? You're crazy, Rin, but I think that's what I like about you," he snickered.

AN: writing this chapter was annoying because I'm not really supposed to add anything from Haru's POV but I let that rule slip like one time in this chapter and I wanted to add in this one line because it was smooth as fuck but I realised Haruka would never say it at this point in their relationship ("isn't it more formal to call you by your family name?" "I want you to practice saying it, it's going to be your family name soon") so i was ugh.

LinkinBizkit97: Thank you! Yeah, I'm really into that stuff to, I've had a morbid interest in those sort of things ever since I was little ("Sucker Punch" and "Alice: Madness Returns" definitely made me a little too obsessed). Thanks and also double thanks. I did go to the fair and it was pretty great, I got my make up one and my hair was put into pin curls.

Skydancing Dragon: Thanks! I was actually worried about my writing because I felt it read too "script-like" because it was more actions and dialogue but this comment made me feel a little less nervous about that. There are other pairings. There's ReiGisa but it's kind of a background thing (implied) I guess. And I might add MakoRin just because it's a fun pairing but it wouldn't really last longer than a chapter or two. Also SeiGou, which is mentioned but Seijuro himself doesn't really turn up in this fanfic since it would be pretty weird for your sister's boyfriend to come visit you in a psychiatric ward.

LIZZHIMAU: Thank you!

WinterPrayerOfTheMoons: Thank you, this is a fairly quick update but I don't think updates are going to be as quick as they have been after this chapter. Also, I love your username!


	6. TheNeuroticCarries aFeelingOfInferiority

AN: Yes it's here! I've have been working on this whenever I've had time. This one's a bit more plot heavy than previous chapters so there's not a lot of Rin/Haru interaction. Also I slipped up again and put in a small piece of Haruka POV.

Rin had expected that once he had given Haruka the bracelet, his life would somehow simmer down and that his stay here would speed up. Like there was some kind of cosmic alliance that dictated that if Rin did something he would just be able to leave. When he lay his head down that night, he realised something horrible. He'd only been here for a day and a half.

Maybe it was good, it was just a rocky day and a half that opened up with what would otherwise be smooth sailing. But as he lay down, eyes red and head teeming and pounding full of nightmares and thoughts and darkness, all he could hear was the tapping of feet and yelling and tossing and turning and gentle sobbing. Then he thought, _nope, things are about to get a lot more difficult._

In the morning, he had to skip having a shower first thing when he realised that there were people in the bathroom first-thing in the morning. Instead he went down to the canteen and looked out for somewhere to sit again. Again, Nagisa waved him over and so Rin went and sat with them.

As per usual, Rei was fussy and deemed that the slightest things (fly away hair, mismatching pyjamas, sharp teeth) were omens that some odd thing and irritating thing would happen. Meanwhile, Nagisa made excited and inappropriately personal conversation. Rin was glad he had toast this morning though. Rei said that toast never has bad omens.

"Hey, Rin, why is Haruka wearing that bracelet you were wearing the other day?" Nagisa asked. Rin stopped eating and looked at them, trying to find an excuse. _If I tell them I didn't know, I might get him into shit. If I say the truth then they might think I'm some sort of push over who lets people steal his shit._

"I gave it to him."

"Why?" Nagisa and Rei asked at the same time.

"I guess I just felt bad for him," Rin replied.

"So you don't find him… stand-offish?" Rei asked.

"Well, I-I guess, he just seems sort of… like a lost cause so I just felt kind of bad for him, I guess."

There was silence after that. Then Nagisa drummed another conversation with Rei about how he was annoyed that his family still hadn't visited since one of his older sisters was going away to Tokyo or something because they wanted her to be in the olympic gymnastics team or something.

_Olympics, _Rin thought. Before everything got really crazy he'd wanted to be in the Olympics, swimming. He didn't feel like eating anymore. He said a quick bye, scrapped the slice and a half of toast he had left in the bin and decided to go for a shower.

As he approached the bathroom he was glad to find it was empty. There were lockers by the showers for people to put their clothes in. Rin was glad his locker combination was fairly easy to remember. _24371_.

Checking behind his shoulder once again, he scanned the bathroom to make sure he was mostly alone. He undressed as quickly as possible, shoved his clothes into his locker and darted for the shower. He was glad that they kept towels in the bathrooms themselves. It would have been so annoying to have to ask to get a towel.

Even though he had intended to wash and be done with it, as always he ended up crying in the shower. He couldn't help it. Whenever he was naked he could see all the cuts and scars and bruises. He'd always put an element of strategy into cutting himself. Places you wouldn't think someone would cut themselves. So if someone noticed he could say, he tripped and that's why there was a cut on his shin, or he walked into something sharp and cut his stomach. He ended up quitting the swim team after people started wondering if it was more than just clumsiness. The cuts ran up and down his back, or stomach, or lower leg, or... anywhere easy enough to conceal.

When he planned to kill himself, he went for the wrists because who did he need to conceal anything from if he was dead. That was the thought that caused him to cry because god damn it! Everything would be easier if he were dead, life was so hard and stressful and no matter what nothing good ever came of anything he did. It was always worrying, and trying hard and not succeeding, and loneliness, and concealing, and suffering, and crying in the shower.

* * *

"Hello, Rin," a peppy petite brunette woman introduced herself. Her name tag which was attached to a lanyard read :"Dr Amakata."

"Hello, Dr Amakata," Rin replied as she eased her way into the arm chair parallel to the couch Rin had flopped into.

"So why don't we talk about how you feel right now, how've you been since you were admitted?"

"I guess, generally, I try not to think about what I'm really feeling, I just ignore it and try to get on with things as periodically as I can, step by step. But when I can't focus on something else, all the… pain just floods back and it hurts…"

* * *

"So you had your first one on one session, today, huh?" Nagisa asked Rin at lunch.

"Yeah, Dr Amakata prescribed me with some anti-depressants, prozac, I think."

"Ew, I had those before and they were the worst."

"Different anti-depressants work better with different people's biology, Nagisa," Rei replied.

"Yeah, but they taste gross!"

"That's because you always took them with coke and that made them dissolve faster, you had to take them with water!"

The two had another back and forth consisting of how to properly take your medication. He hadn't realised it before but the two seemed to orbit each other. Like they were connected in some sort of way. Rin felt so uncomfortable to be that sat _there_, right _there_ where two people who clicked in that sort of way were so _into_ one another.

He would never be like that with anyone. _No matter how many times you cry yourself to sleep at night wishing someone loved you, it's never going to happen_. He decided that was the end of lunch, he hadn't been hungry in the first place. He pushed himself out of his seat, out of the corner of his eye he spotted that Haruka was in his seat, at the table which Haruka had proclaimed as being his table.

Haruka had a plastic red tray with real food on it. He held a plastic spoon at arm's length, peering at it as if it were the devil incarnate.

Throwing caution the wind, Rin decided to sit next to the blue eyed schizophrenic.

"Hi, Har- Nanase," Rin said with a fake smile. In response, Haruka almost dropped his spoon.

"Rin!" He exclaimed, turning to face him with raised eyebrows, widened eyes, and his lips curving into the slightest frown, before relaxing into a neutral expression once again.

"Did I surprise you?"

"I just wasn't expecting you."

"That literally suprising someone, Nanase."

"That's nice. Are you going to leave now?" Haruka asked, settling his spoon on the tray.

"Why? Do you want me to?"

"Yes."

"I forgot that schizophrenia affected if you have manners or not."

"See, that's why you're insane, you think it's polite to lie about your feelings," Haruka said, picking up the spoon and giving it a side-glance.

"No, but most people aren't so direct about these sorts of things. It's usually like "I would like to be alone for now, sorry," or a "if that's okay," kind of thing."

Haruka hummed slightly. "Are you going to go now?" He asked, shifting slightly.

"Fine, whatever, see you around."

* * *

Sleeping was hard again. He felt kind of bothered by the fact that Haruka didn't want him around. It was such an odd change from Haruka's persistence to be around him the day before. Rin flipped through the book about schizophrenia again but there words seemed so jumbled at night time.

Another screamed pierced the air and Rin decided that even if the words were in perfect order, he could never hope to focus on the letters. He felt a migraine coming on. He got out of the plain room, which somehow did not glow in the dark, despite its complete whiteness.

The nurse on night duty turned and smiled when she saw him.

"Rin, do you need anything?" she asked.

"Can I have an aspirin, please? I think I have a migraine?"

"Give me a second, I'll need to check your data before I can get you anything," she said. She flipped the sheets on her clipboard, then nodded, then frowned. "I'm sorry, I can't. Aspirin counteracts the effects of Prozac. Also, it's too soon into your treatment for you to be allowed to handle any other drugs than those which we prescribe to you."

"Do you have ear plugs? It's so loud?"

"What are you talking about?" She asked, cocking her head to the side.

"D-don't you hear it? Are you deaf or have you just gotten used to it? There are people screaming almost constantly, and crying, or walking around, or talking to themselves or yelling!"

"Okay, calm down. How often have you been hearing this?" she asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?!"

"I- I'm not a doctor, Rin, s-so I don't know how to tell you this. It's difficult for health and safety which is why we have multiple night nurses also the highest risk patients often don't sleep down in their rooms. Like Haruka, he usually sleeps in a communal ward at night time. We usually go in patients' rooms every hour to make sure they're okay. Well some patients are checked on more regularly," she rambled slightly.

"What is it? What aren't you telling me?"

"We built the rooms to be sound proofed to prevent disturbing other people on the ward or other people in the hospital. But, I'll call a doctor and see what we should do."

"What's going on?" he whispered to himself.

* * *

The stand-in psychiatrist didn't know what to do but decided that Rin, for that night at least, should sleep on the communal ward. As he entered, pillow tucked under his arm, his breath locked.

This was where dangerous patients slept. He could see Hanako lying on her side with her thumb in her mouth drooling messily as she snored like a growling lion.

He also noticed people who were sat up straight or people who were on their back with the whites of the eyes displayed for all. There were around five people on this ward. It was a disused children's ward. There were creepy pictures of supposedly happy things painted on the wall.

A slight gasp was heard in the oddly rhythmic bouts of silence and snores and bated breaths. The bed next to the wall was empty and that was where Rin chose to sleep. He dropped the pillow onto the bed. He began to shuffle the blankets so that they were more cosy.

Despite his endeavours to become comfortable in his pokey lumpy bed and horrible clinically scented sheets, the ringing sounds of screams and chatter and footsteps and water which he heard in the normal ward had not gone away. Something poked the side of his matress. He rolled over, so his back faced the wall, and noticed Haruka was parallel to him.

"Rin, can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you real?"

Rin thought about it. He'd never really thought about if he were real before but, he could so easily be not real, imaginary, fake. He could so easily be someone's delusion, someone's alter ego who lives in their mind, someone's coma dream. When he thought about it, he had no idea what the definition of real was.

"I dunno," he replied. "Are you?"

"I don't know either," Haruka replied. Rin smiled slightly. He wasn't sure when he fell asleep but Haruka was. Haruka watched as the consciousness that illuminated his face dulled, he watched him fall asleep. That was confirmation enough to Haruka that Rin was real. He got out of his bed and hoped that the nurse wouldn't notice. He kneeled at his bedside, revering him as though he were an effigy of some great religion –a precious gift of God, too perfect to be touched.

"Goodnight, Rin," he whispered and then went back in his bed. A fear gnawing at the side of his mind, as the voices told him all the trouble he'd cause and all the trouble he'll get, that he wasn't sure if he could breathe without Rin _again_.

* * *

Author's Responses

Naa-Nanase: Thank you! With a lot of the characters there are meaningful reasons for what they say and do. I have almost the whole story planned out as well as a possible spin off piece if I manage to finish.I'm trying to fit in as much cannon as I can (because some of the characterization is really affected by giving them specific disorders) so I had to add that Rin was huggy when he was little. I thought it would have been so funny to say but it was just too out of character at that point. Also, I do try and drop in hints/foreshadowing in conversation so watch out for that.

Skydancing Dragon: Thanks! I have done a lot of research on schizophrenia, I think that if you set yourself with a good enough idea as to how the schizophrenia affects someone's perception on reality as well as what it causes them to fixate upon, it's not as difficult.

WinterPrayerOfTheMoons: You're welcome! And thank you for reviewing. More about Haruka's delusion that he and Rin know each other already will be explored as the story goes on.

No0onat: Thank you! Sorry, I've always been an incredibly concise writer, it's an odd habit but it's one I've gotten into as a lot of writing courses tell you not to write things which are irrelevant. I often just write until I find that chapter has reached it's natural end. I didn't have the part right at the end where Rin is in the communal ward but I decided to add it in so there was so more Haru/Rin interaction. I think if Haruka had said that Rin would have probably been confused and shocked ^-^


	7. PerceptionExternallyGuidedHallucination

AN: And so instead of revising, the young Caitlin decides to write fanfiction instead to prove her idiotic prowess

* * *

"What you're experiencing is completely natural. Hallucinations often occur when someone is in between dreaming and sleeping. In fact, dreams are just big old hallucinations, as you fall asleep you become less conscious, thus your mind is reverting to the subconscious. Psychosis is in fact a state when someone is in a deep state of their subconscious for a prolonged period of time," Dr Amakata explained.

"Well, how come I've never really experienced these hallucinations before?" Rin replied.

"Well you're in a new and stressful environment, that's sure to stimulate some anxiety and stress in the brain which might cause these hallucinations at night time. Often, I would write these hallucinations of completely but it sounds like they're all very similar. I think that the hallucination in and of itself is of some significance to you."

"Well, yeah, it might be but when would I have heard these things before?" Rin asked.

"Why don't you mull it over for tomorrow's session, since we shouldn't be having this one anyway, it's just an emergency chat."

"Okay," Rin said. Dr Amakata smiled then walked out of the yellow waiting room and got set up in the counselling room. The plastic white clock in the corner of the room hung up high, ticking in omniscience, 7 AM. As per usual, the wretched medical stench was driving Rin mad. He decided to leave and get some breakfast.

* * *

Haruka was sat at his usual seat with a nurse by his side, Rin observed this as he got a fruit salad for his breakfast that particular morning. Other than that , there wasn't really any change to the layout of the canteen, except that Ai was sitting with Nagisa and Rei again. And Rin didn't really know where to sit.

He decided he would go and eat in the common room. As he settled down in the room, he realised that he hadn't actually set foot in the room until he had first arrived but then he remembered that he'd only been there for three and a half days. It was Tuesday? Or was it Wednesday? It was so difficult to keep track of time.

"Eating alone?" a semi-familiar voice could be heard above the tick-tock interrupted silence. Rin turned to find that Makoto, the volunteer, had sat next to him.

"Oh, yeah, I haven't really met anyone that's good for sitting with, yet," he replied.

"Really? Rei and Nagisa are usually really friendly."

"Oh, they were but I don't think Ai was that comfortable with having a new person on the table so I never really felt comfortable around them."

_That and they're so obviously in love with each other that it's kind of awkward to be there unless you're socially oblivious. Maybe I should ask Haruka to sit with me, he's socially oblivious and it would be kind of funny to see how much of a game changer that would be._

Rin shook his head slightly to shake off such crazy thoughts. And so he ended up having a conversation with Makoto about how he was progressing in the ward and it was nice and Rin then went back to the canteen to put his fruit pot and his plastic spoon in the bin.

When he got back to the canteen, Haruka's table was now only occupied by the nurse who had been sat with Haruka. Her hands seemed to be gripping her scalp as though she wear about to rip her own her out and scream bloody murder. _Well, I guess the whole "getting Haruka to eat something other than a solid bar of nutrients" didn't go so well._

* * *

It was about 2pm when Haruka just randomly opened Rin's door and sat on his bed. Rin, being the diplomat he was, set his book aside and sat up. He didn't speak though because speaking was far too logical and make communication much harder and much simpler (in different ways).

It was kind of odd because about two minutes later he realised they were just kind of sat there not really doing anything and he kind of felt like he needed to talk but it had been like two minutes so talking now would just be awkward and kind of weird so he didn't know what to do.

"Do you hear them?" Haruka asked, turning to Rin.

"Hear who?" Rin leaned forward slightly, straightening his back.

"I suppose you don't. Nobody does."

"Okay," he sighed and flopped back towards his pillow.

"You don't have bedsheets," Haruka stated.

"I know, they thought I would hang myself with them."

"Would you?"

"If this hospital was empty, yes."

"Why?" Haruka asked, his dull stone-like gaze moving from the wall to Rin. He took a deep breath and sat up.

"I haven't got a reason to live, I guess."

"And that's a reason to die?"

"Yes. I have no reason to be here so all I'm doing is eating food that someone else is starving for, sleeping in a bed that someone is probably actually desperate for, causing people problems, breathing oxygen other people deserve and turning it into carbon dioxide which scientists say is killing planet Earth. And I'm wasting all of this shit for no grand reason. No one's life is going to be saved, no cures will be found, nothing's going to change. I have no right to breathe, but for as long as I'm living, I'll be doing it automatically."

"They say that, when you die, your body decomposes and to do that it takes oxygen and also converts it into carbon dioxide. So essentially, you'd still be taking oxygen away and killing the Earth but people would… miss you," Haruka replied.

"Who would miss me? I've made my family's lives a nightmare, they were somewhere between being relieved and panicked when I was admitted. Relieved because they wouldn't have to deal with me anymore, panicked because of how much they've got to pay to keep me in here. And it's still one of the cheapest places."

"Why didn't they take you to a free clinic, then?"

"Did you know it's actually really hard to get into one of those? I was going to go to one originally but they're mostly completely full or have really specific regulations."

"I didn't know. Do you think your family wouldn't miss you?"

"I- I guess they would but they would be better off without me. A lot of people get used to it, someone being dead. They stop, caring, or they stop talking about it and everything in the world simmers down and then there's no real proof they ever existed, except the ashes on the shelf, or the tombstone in the graveyard. And eventually, ivy will climb up the tombstone because after someone's been dead for a while, no one gives a shit. No one visits their grave it just gets messy and overgrown and crazy. But it's sort of like living anyway, because the older you get the less people give a fuck about you. The only difference is, when you're living you get wrinkles and you stink and you know it and you can see people doing things you like to do but you're getting brittle and you can't do them. When you're dead, you don't see that. When you're dead, there's nothing else. There's no joy or fun in being dead but there's no pain either. And sometimes, when you know there isn't any joy or fun for you, only the pain, the nothingness doesn't seem so bad, it seems nice, calming."

"Thank you."

"Thank you?"

"My parents died when I was younger, so it's better to think that they're death meant that they wouldn't get old and ignored," Haruka explained.

"That's not really true for everyone, just people like me. I mean you would have visited your parents, right?"

"No. No, I wouldn't have," Haruka replied, almost coldly. Rin wasn't really sure why but he put his arm around the schizophrenic and decided that that had been enough words for one day.

* * *

The common room wasn't _as_ frightening as Rin had originally anticipated it to be. He sat at a table read a book, heard a verbal fight break out, took a deep breath, choked on the disgusting clinical smell, heard this horrible sound like rusty metallic wheels clattering along a linoleum floor, heard the doctors break the fighters up, heard the awkward silence.

"Well that was a train wreck," Nagisa commented jovially. Rei laughed and all went back to normal but Rin couldn't focus on his book anymore.

"What're you reading?" Rin looked up and noticed that Makoto had taken a seat next to him. It was refreshing to talk to sane people.

"_The Picture of Dorian Gray, _it was like the only book I could find, so I thought I'd read it," he said.

"Really, like there's fifty books here," Makoto replied.

"Yeah, but they all seemed boring, or too _girly."_

"So what do you think of _Dorian Gray?"_

"Well, it's good, I mean, it's interesting." _It's also full of homoerotic subtext, holy shit._

"Yeah, I've read it before, actually. What chapter are you on?"

"Chapter 3?" Rin replied noncommittally, he was a little lost with the old fashioned prose. The truth was he was too embarrassed to take a romance book like _Twilight _or _The Notebook._

"Oh, so your still early into the book?" Makoto asked. Rin nodded. Across the room a girl was clutching a battered red book, which was not from the library. It had Hanako's named etched at the bottom.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead."

"I heard at group therapy that a lot of people seem to like this girl called "Hanako" but I don't know why and apparently she's leaving soon and I'm kind of _curious _about it all," before Makoto could reply, Haruka had appeared out of nowhere and sat next to Rin.

"Hello, Haruka," Makoto said, in a perfectly friendly tone. As though Rin's previous question had evaporated into thin air.

"Hi," Haruka replied with nothing to his voice as Rin often noticed.

"So, how have your sessions been going?"

"I don't need them," Haruka replied.

"Yes, but the doctors say that if you co-operate you can go swimming."

"I don't need the permission of mad men," Haruka replied. Underneath the table, he searched for Rin's hand, when he found it he laced his fingers around Rin's, whose hand stiffened. Above the table nothing had changed except for Rin's face which had started to get red and blushy.

"Are you alright?" Makoto asked Rin.

"Uh, yeah, it's just all the homoerotic subtext is kind of embarrassing," Rin half-lied. Haruka looked at Rin feeling something in his chest when he saw his pretty red face. He jolted away from the table, letting go of Rin's hand and running off toward the emergency room.

"I guess he doesn't like homoerotic subtext?" Rin joked awkwardly.

"So sorry, I have to go tell the nurses he ran off. It was nice talking to you, Rin," Makoto smiled and patted Rin on the shoulder, and the readhead began blushing like a school girl, again.

"Uh, yeah, cool, see you some time, that would be cool," Rin rambled. His hand felt tingly.

* * *

The doctors unanimously decided that since Rin knew his room was soundproofed he couldn't sleep in there at night and that if he told someone he would have to move hospitals. Rin wasn't sure how he felt about this but Dr Amakata said that if they worked together then it wouldn't be long until he could sleep in his own room again. However, Rin took this information with a pinch of salt (and his first Prozac), that didn't mean his bedroom.

"Hey, Haruka," Rin said, "Are you alright? You seemed kind of freaked out in the common room, earlier?"

"Yes, I just thought there was something wrong, inside of me, like a bug," Haruka replied, setting his bed up next to Rin's.

"Well, I guess it's good you were okay."

There was silence between the two of them once the beds had been set up. Lights out would be coming soon. Haruka turned to Rin, with an unplaceable look in his eye.

"Rin, have you ever been in love with anyone?" he asked.

"Well, I don't think so. I think that the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone is that they love you back, so I don't think I've ever been in love with anyone."

"Have you ever loved someone before?" Haruka asked.

"There was this one person but they… I didn't really fall under… they had no interest in me, and I was just being stupid. Maybe I didn't love them, they were kind of a dick."

"What does love feel like?" Haruka whispered back.

"It felt weird, it felt horrible, actually. Romantic love is actually the worst kind of love because unless they love you back it just feels like there's a hole in your heart and it just really sucks," Rin sighed.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Does it feel physical?"

"It's everything, physical, mental, emotional. It makes you sick to your stomach."

"Do you want to die because of that… girl?"

"What girl?" Rin turned to Haru in confusion.

"The girl you said you loved."

"Oh, uh, them? Well I'm not here because of that person, I mean I guess it was an added problem but I don't really think about them a lot. I do think about the trouble it caused me though, I'd say that was a bigger factor in everything that happened."

"Were you… did you love a boy, Rin?"

Rin did not reply, he just decided to pretend that Haru hadn't asked the last question and trued to sleep, despite that god damn clamouring calamity in his head or his ear. Haruka turned on his back and smiled, there were happy memories on the ceiling.

Rin dreamt of sitting in Dr Amakata's little room which was flooding and flooding and the more he tried to talk or yell the higher the water rose. Haruka dreamed of holding hands with Rin and feeling that weird feeling in his chest and coughing out a butterfly and Rin coughing out one too. At least one of those dreams was generically and dream reader friendly.

* * *

AN: UGH, this is awkward, it probably won't be out til tuesday actually.

LinkinBizkit97: Thank you! Once again I get told a lot to make sure that your writing makes people ask questions. Think of a lot of this as being like a friendship bracelet, you have lots of separate things, you put them together, and then tie up the loose ends. I was a bit worried I got their relationship a little erong so thank you, again. Also, the part at Rin's bed was actually never going to be a scene but I know how annoying it is when you read a fanfic and the main pairing don't interact very much for a whole chapter, it drives me crazy. I'm glad I added it though, it was actually quite significant. I have been meaning to watch "Girl, Interrupted" for forever, but I can't find it in DVD stores and I don't think we have it on UK Netflix.

ElykaEvelyn: Thank you!

No0onat: Thanks, things like this make my day because I always get a good feeling when I wake up and a fanfic I really like has bene updated. Yep, along with Rin and Haru's developing romance/relationship there's the mytstery of both Haru and Rin's life and how they ended up the way they did, etc etc.

WinterPrayerofTheMoons: Thank you. Sorry it's no longer again, I'm so prissy about pacing.

NanaMatsu: Thank you so much! You're too sweet.


	8. The More You See It The More You Like It

AN: I know there are trigger warnings in the description but I'm tagging again just to make certain that this is self-harm (glossed over but still there) in this chapter.

* * *

The metronome on the coffee table stood still, it wasn't ticking. There was only a digital clock on the left side of the coffee table, facing Dr Amakata. The couch wasn't as soft today, it was lumpy.

"Where would you like to begin?" she asked, putting her plastic lidded coffee cup on the table and smiling at Rin.

"I don't know," he replied.

"Well, okay. Let's begin with your hallucinations. Did you have them last night?"

"Yes, but they were different, somehow."

"How were they different?"

"Well, usually, I can pinpoint different noises and they're all quite clear but last night it felt like they were all… melted together, I couldn't really tell the difference between any of the noises."

"Was that better or worse?"

"I'm not sure."

There was a pause as Dr Amakata scribbled down a few notes on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard, eyebrows furrowed and the tip of her tongue poking.

"Rin," she said as she stopped writing, "What are the distinct sounds you hear when you're in the hallucinogenic state between sleeping and being awake?"

"Well, I hear people talking."

"What are they saying?"

"I don't know. They're babbling and I can't understand a word of what they're saying. It's like when you're upstairs and someone is talking downstairs and your door is closed, I guess."

"Do you hear anything else?"

"Yes, there's also footsteps and screaming and water."

"Water? What does water sound like?"

"It sounds like... running water and... splashing, I suppose."

"Running water? Do you mean like a tap or a river?"

Rin paused focusing on the memory. He had always thought it was tap water because, well, he thought that he was just hearing the world around him so it would only be logical that any running water he could hear on the ward would be coming from a tap.

"It's… I think it might be closer to a river."

"I have an app which plays different sounds, I can play them for you and you can identify which one sounds the closest, would you like to do that?" Dr Amakata offered whilst riffling through her huge tote bag, searching for her worn, battered and slightly cracked iPad. Rin nodded.

Dr Amakata played four sounds, labelling them: sound 1, sound 2, sound 3, and sound 4. Sound 1 was obviously rain and sound 2 was obviously a tap and when listening to it closely Rin realised he certainly hadn't heard a tap.

"It sounds like sound 3."

"That is…" Dr Amakata paused as she went through the app double checking carefully, "The sound of waves, in the sea," she then scribbled down this note.

"Onto the screaming. What's it like?"

"It's… terrifying."

"So it's _terrifying,_ not _terrified_?"

"What's the difference?"

"Well, you said terrifying, suggesting the scream scares you. However, if you said terrified, that would suggest that it's the sound of a terrified person screaming. As you can tell, I wanted to be a lit major when I went to university," she chuckled.

The alarm clock began to beep.

"That's the end of our session today. Before you go, I want to talk to you about something since the board of doctors have a meeting tomorrow and I need your permission before I have theirs and I don't want to have to wait a whole week to start this treatment, if I did that it would prolong your stay here."

"Okay, what is it?"

"I think you have repressed memories, most likely from a childhood trauma you suffered. I want to try hypnotherapy so we can find out what the root of a lot of your problems are."

"Repressed memories?

* * *

"So ,she wants to hypnotise you and make you her slave?" Haruka asked Rin at lunch.

"What? No, Nanase. That's a carnival trick, hypnotherapy is completely different," Rin replied, hitting the other boy on the back of the head, who in turn put his hand on the spot where Rin had hit him. "Oh, sorry, did I hit you too hard?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Okay, then," Rin decided to push a piece of food around his plate. "I don't think I have repressed memories but, I could be wrong."

"I don't think you should let _doctors _get into your mind. It's too precious," Haruka replied whilst also pushing his food to the side of his plate and then tearing it apart and then holding it up to his eye. He didn't notice Rin burying his face in his hands as his cheeks went red.

"Why would you say that? That sounds so weird!" Rin mumbled through his hands. Haruka turned back and watched as he felt that weird butterfly in his heart again.

"Because it's true. The doctors can't be trusted."

"No, that wasn't what I was- Whatever," Rin sighed and then chuckled as he lifted his face from his hands. "I've always wondered: what do you do during your sessions?"

"I don't speak."

"Because you don't trust them?"

"Yes. You obviously trust the doctors though. Why?"

"Well, I just want to get out of here?"

"So you think subservience is the way out? I used to think that too and I told them the secrets, now I've been here for three years. They're just trying to trick you to get you to trust them and then they can find a reason to keep you prisoner here."

"You've been here since you were thirteen?"

"I don't know, I don't believe in time."

"But- but you just said three years."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"Why would I believe in time? There's no proof for it?"

"Aging?"

"We grow and then we start rotting, plants aren't allotted a specific amount of _time _to live and die, it just starts and ends."

"I guess, you have a point, I think."

"Of course I do, I'm always right."

"Always right?" Rin cocked his head to the side. "Tell me everything you know about me that I don't."

"I can't. If I tell you now, then the course of the future will change."

"The future is time."

"The future is events that haven't happened yet."

"But if that's events that are going to happen but haven't happened yet then that's fate which means things are allocated certain amounts of-"

Haruka pushed a finger to Rin's lips and shushed him. The redhead began blushing furiously once again, and Haruka felt that butterfly in his chest again.

"You make people's hearts turn into butterflies," Haruka said before picking up his tray of dissected food and walking off.

"What?" Rin spluttered.

* * *

Rin got a call at two o'clock, when he answered the phone there was an excited squeal from one well known source. His sister.

"Me and mum are coming to visit you on Saturday!"

"Does mum really have the time to take off work to come and visit?" Rin asked.

"Mum stopped working on Saturdays weeks ago, stupid."

"Wouldn't she need extra money to keep me in here?"

"No, we've got plenty of cash in the emergency fund ever since-" and though his sister was talking it suddenly sounded like that incomprehensible downstairs, doorclosed chatter. "Anyway, what's it like in the loony bin?"

"Well, it's different. I suppose. It's kind of weird."

"Have you made friends?"

"This is a psychiatric ward, not boarding school."

"Hey, do you remember when you went to boarding school?"

"I try not to."

"Aw, why? You got a scholarship, that's really impressive!"

"Uh, yeah. Well anyway, how's home?"

"Home's good but we miss you."

"I miss you guys too. I'll see you on Saturday," Rin hung up the phone.

* * *

He hadn't anticipated that Haruka would be the one to find him in his room, bawling his eyes out and blood leaking from his arm.

"You're bleeding," the frozen matter of fact voice said from the doorway, making Rin jolt out of his skin. As he looked up Haruka instinctively shut the door.

"What did you do?" he asked in a whisper, walking closer to Rin and then crouching at his side.

"Go away," Rin hissed, nursing his arm. Haruka grabbed the wounded arm instead. The blood bubbled out of a nasty scratchy gash in his arm and Haruka quickly let go of Rin's arm so he could pull off his hoody and wrap it around the cut. Rin glared at him through his bloodshot red eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" Rin asked.

"Why did you this?" Haruka shot back, staring right at Rin. "There are people who care about you. People who-"

"How did you know my family called?" Rin had abruptly choked out.

"I was… there when the nurse told you that you had a call," he lied.

"They're coming to visit," Rin sobbed, leaning forward on to Haruka's shoulder, "On Saturday. I don't want them to come here and see me like this. I don't want them to realise I'm still a disappointment and they're wasting their money and they don't have a choice," he sobbed harshly, leaving a damp patch on Haruka's t-shirt.

"They probably won't think that. They'll probably think you're great, because you are."

"Oh, god, they're going to keep me here forever," Rin sobbed. But in the end, Haruka helped Rin up and they went to find the nurse.

* * *

"Everyone slips up once in a while, sweetie," the nurse smiled, bandaging the semi-deep gash up. "In fact it's impressive that you've been here for nearly a week and had no slip ups until now!"

Haruka was sat in a chair to the side of the room, chin resting on his palm, elbows on his knees. Rin didn't look at him but rather the white tourniquet of bandaging on his arm.

"You'll have to come visit me every morning to get the cut washed and the dressing changed," she said as she quickly jotted down a few notes. Rin nodded, straightening out his arm.

"Oh, and Haruka, thank you for bringing Rin here," she smiled then opened the door and waved them off. Haruka pushed himself up out of his slumped position in his chair and walked off without Rin. Rin shrugged before going to the canteen to grab some food. He felt disgustingly hungry.

* * *

At night time, Rin noticed that Haruka wasn't there. The hallucinations in his head were loud and crisp and he dreamt of drowning in his own blood.

* * *

AN: I hated writing this chapter because of the selfharm part. I couldn't write it how it was originally intended to be, I'm not sorry about that though. Also, my exams are starting on Tuesday and I may or may not have an odd psychosematic pain. Hooray!

Re-reviews (longer than normal because I realised I didn't reply to a couple from the last update.

Lovegranted: Yeah, I've been obsessed with psychiatric units ever since I was like 9. And the first fanfic I read was an asylum Au. Also, despite the painful britishness of this fanfic, I used family name because the characters are Japanese and in Japan the family name (surname) comes first and I don't know if it's still appropriate to use the term last name/ surname.

KingandPawn: Thank you! It's a pretty detailed plan as to the whole do they know it eachother. After this chapter, I don't think it will be too difficult to guess the answer. #Obviousplotisobvious. I'm hoping to have a few twists and turns.

YamiNoTsuki10: Thanks! Things are going to start coming together pretty soon.

kalithunder10: Thank you! Yeah, things are about to start getting pretty angsty on Haru's end from this point on which is going to be a nightmare to write. Also, I think in the third or fourth chapter I mentioned that it's against the ward rules for people to have relationships so there's dodging that as well.

ElykaEvelyn: It makes me happy to know that I can cheer someone up. I hope your okay, I hate school too.

samehime345: Thanks! Haru has schizophrenia rather than DID. Also, I do have a weird writing style. I usually write the way I talk which is in awkward long sentences or weird choppy two words sentences.

chiiaki: Thank you! I am going to try and continue this the best I can. I also have a possible sequel in mind but I dunno until I've finished it.

Naananase: Oh god, every time I write an update I'm worried I'm romanticizing mental illness and obsessive tendencies and being on psychiatric wards. I decided that since the aim of the story is not "oh we're in love because we're both sick wanna write some poetry" and more of a "we're in love but we're not well and we're going to try and get better so we can get off the ward and be in love and be together because we need to conquer our mental illness first" idea. Also, schizophrenia will change people but at the core it's got a lot to do with personality and stuff being affected by the illness. Yes, I read that shchizophrenics are unpredictible. There's usually an odd and contrived reason for everything he does. Thanks for reviewing, though. I think my reply was really awkward though.

No0onat: Yeah, I think that chapter 7 was kind of a turning point Haruka but Rin's going to be a little slow on the uptake. Thank you!

Vania: I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you don't have too much trouble with it.

Okay, so that was chapter 7 and also I realised as I was answering some of the replies, the big plot twist could have actually been that Haru isn't real and Rin is the schizophrenic but then I realised it wouldn't make sense but whatever. I'll try and figure out some really interesting twists.


	9. People Do What They Are Told To Do

AN: I would not only like to thank the triple goddess for me finally being able to pull my shit together and write this chapter but also the maiden, mother and crone. Yeah, no but I'm sorry this is kind of... late... and short. This was an awkward chapter to write, it's kind of like, I felt like I needed a certain thing to happen but I felt it was happening too soon, so, it didn't. And so that kind of left me with trying to write this chapter but not being able to write the thing.

* * *

A week had gone by since Rin's first incident on the ward and adapting had been slow. Slow but sure. The referral for hypnotherapy had gone through and Rin would be starting it soon. He was terrified.

On an unrelated note, Haruka hadn't been forthcoming about why he hadn't been anywhere in the hospital for two whole days after Rin's incident. It was odd, and lonely. Rin had come to rely on him as his sole source of company, despite only being there for a few days. Nagisa and Rei had been perfectly willing to allow him to sit with them but there had been that uncomfortable air that accumulates with people who seem to be really good friends. You just don't feel included.

Rin had been really happy to see Haruka resurface. He wasn't sure if Haruka shared the sentiment, the schizophrenic was pretty difficult to read most of the time.

On this particular Friday morning, Rin was pushing his food around the plate, looking on in misery, depressed by the idea of winding through his memories, like there was some sort of doubt that his reality was reality.

Haruka wasn't eating, or talking. He had been more or less silent recently. It pissed Rin off because he wanted someone to talk to that wasn't going to strike it down as something to put in a record or over explain it to him and throw in a hundred "do you understand?"'s. Just someone to listen to him without interrupting. Unfortunately, Haruka was coldly silent and Rin felt somewhat intimidated to talk.

Once his food had become and inedible-looking mush from being dragged to and fro his plate, he decided that he hadn't wanted to eat in the first place. He got out of his chair and scraped his food off of his plate. Only as he was attempting to do so his worries drifted away from that moment to his fear of the beat of the metronome and, in the same way his thoughts had slipped, the plastic tray fell in the trash can.

"Shit," he muttered underneath breath. He looked around hoping no one had noticed before he scuttled away, not wanting to have to shove his hand down into all that gross stuff.

* * *

The metronome began. Rin's stomach leapt into his throat and he swore to whatever deity that cared, that he was choking.

"I want you to close your eyes," Dr Amakata spoke soothingly. Rin's eyes flickered shut and he felt cold and vulnerable already, anchored only by the threadbare roughness of the couch against his arm and the steady "thunk" of the metronome.

"You need to focus on the metronome and then you need to follow my instructions. But you can only follow them if…" the doctor rambled on with some confusing instructions. Rin tried to follow them. He knew she was probably using some wild hand gestures to punctuate her point.

When she stopped speaking, Rin nodded.

"Are you ready to begin?"

"Yes," he replied before focusing on the metronome and slowly being dragged away.

* * *

_He was on a boat. It rocked back and forth, it wobbled on the sea, shifting around and hefting itself around on the waves. The clouds were grey and dark and so was the sky. There was a large wave and the water crashed against the boat, some cascading down like rain. A small rivulet fell down Rin's face, the little drop of water reflected his hair, making it look like blood was running down his face._

_He then heard something he hadn't heard before, something rusty and metallic jostling together. Was it chains? Across from him a dark figure stood right at the very front of the boat. They held the chains in the hand as the avidly removed the anchor that it was attached to. Then, they heaved the anchor overboard, a huge splash of seawater hitting deck. _

_ "__What the fuck are you doing?" Rin said._

_Though the dark figure hadn't seemed to have heard him. They were holding the chains in their hands. Then they did something Rin could never have anticipated. They wrapped the chains around their neck, clipped them in place and jumped off the boat. Rin lunged forward screaming trying to making them stop. He heard footsteps and yelling but he was screaming. At least he thought he was screaming. He couldn't hear his own screams so he kept trying to scream louder to hear his own voice._

* * *

He screamed himself into consciousness. The room came into focus, first the clinical stench, the white ceiling, then the rough settee, then the ticking of the metronome. Oddly enough a metallic taste lingered in his mouth.

"Oh my god! Oh my god, you tried to bite your tongue off!" Dr Amakata screeched.

* * *

A medic came in and explained to the psychiatrist the major difference between a patient who bit their tongue on accident during a traumatic "whatever the hell you whackjobs do in here" and a patient who tried to swallow or bite of their tongue in order to kill themselves. Dr Amakata was oddly relieved. She then sat back down with her notepad on her lap.

"We've made a lot of progress today, Rin. This was extremely successful! You followed all instructions and I have a complete account of your "flashback", so to speak," she cheered. Rin nodded, not being so flexible with word when it hurt every time he flicked his tongue to form a sarcastic "great".

* * *

Haruka was extremely concerned to hear about what happened during Rin's hypnotherapy, which was odd because Rin hadn't even told him anything about what happened. In fact, Haruka hadn't even been told by Rin that his hypnotherapy began today because Haruka hadn't seemed to give a shit about anything all week.

In fact, Rin wasn't really sure if Haruka was actually concerned. It was more than he actually asked Rin how he was feeling. Rin was pissed off so he didn't reply, _it didn't have anything to do with the fact his tongue hurt a lot,_ still.

Rin sat in the common room sucking his own tongue whilst attempting to read _Dorian Gray _whilst Haruka hung over his shoulder like a carrion bird.

"Why do you think Dorian likes Harry so much?" Haruka asked. Rin shrugged, which was uncomfortable when Haruka was on his shoulder.

"Why doesn't he like Basil as much as he likes Harry? It's odd, Basil made a beautiful painting for Dorian but Dorian seems to like Harry better."

"Maybe it's because you don't owe people for doing big elaborate things for you, things they did of their own freewill, not out of request. Maybe it's because Harry is exciting, and he can offer change," Rin replied, though somewhat irritably as his tongue ached in his mouth and he could hear the lisp in his voice.

"Right," Haruka said, pushing himself out of his chair and leaving the room, heading towards his room or the bathroom, Rin supposed, before trying to gain some focus on the book in front of him. It was no use though; the words seemed to wobble on the page.

* * *

At supper, in the evening, Rin decided not to turn up. He got some water but that was it. He couldn't eat with the cut on his damn tongue. He missed Haruka staring at a little black book at the table with a look of raw stress, genuine fear, and true conflict.

* * *

He tossed and turned in the uncomfortable rickety bed he had chosen as his, he hadn't realised just how lonely it was sleeping next to the wall. Usually, he liked to curl into little nooks by walls, it made him feel safe. However, on this ward -one of the most dangerous places he'd ever slept, (the most dangerous being a campsite he was at with his school wherein everyone kept saying there was an axe murderer in the forest nearby), he hated sleeping in the little nook because he felt so utterly alone.

It was uncomfortably hot in the ward and his blankets made him feel like some sort of animal being roasted. He shifted his sheets and looked out to the side opposite the wall. Haruka lay stock still, eyes wide and he stared at the ceiling, bundled up tightly in his sheets. Rin reached out and poked his side.

"What?" Haruka whispered, not looking at Rin.

"I dunno…" Rin muttered, not fully sure why he had poked his friend in the first place. "I'm lonely."

"You could've seen your family. But then you couldn't. Do you think they know what you did?"

"Yes, they had to call them, to tell them my visitation rights were gone."

"Why did you do it?"

"Because I knew if I did it they'd take away my visitation rights."

"So, are you going to try to kill yourself, every time someone might try to visit you?"

"I don't have to worry about that, right now. Dr Amakta said she thinks that family visits might interrupt my progress with her hypnotherapy. Well, at least she said she told my family that, I don't know if it's true or not."

"How was your first session, anyway?"

"It was weird, I think I saw someone kill themselves. I don't know who they were."

"Was that all you saw?"

"Well, I was on a boat, at night…"

Haruka's eyes widened and he almost jumped out of his bed. "Was it in the ocean?" he asked.

"No, it was in the sky," Rin drawled.

"That's pretty weird, Rin."

"I was being sarcastic, genius. Obviously, it was in the ocean where else would it be?"

"Lake, pond, river…"

"I don't think you could keep a boat in a pond, and I think a river's a bit of stretch."

Quiet settled between them, both unsure of what else could be said. Somehow, Rin liked it. The lack of structure and rules to just talking. It was different when you talked to someone who was bereft of any awareness to the rules that you have to keep talking with someone even when there's nothing to talk about. Or what you should talk about or how much you're supposed to hide when you talk to someone.

Rin was almost about to fall asleep when Haruka tapped him.

"I know you're real. Why do you have to be real?"

"Because life is shit," he laughed bitterly.

"I… don't want you to think your life is… shit. I… I want you to be happy. Forever," Haruka said.

"No one lives forever, Haruka."

"I don't think that's true. I think we all live forever, somehow."

"Well, shit that throws my entire plan out of the window," Rin replied with a half-chuckle, "They should probably let me leave."

"I wish I knew what my plan was. I don't even know why I'm here."

"Do you mean here as in, in this room, on this ward, or your purpose on earth as a person."

"…Yes."

Rin laughed out loud, and the nurse chastised them and demanding that they be quiet and go to bed. Rin did and for the first time in forever, his dreams were empty, barren. Maybe he had dream of the ground when snow is covering it, from a very close bird's eye view. Haruka dreamt of… something so oddly Lovecraftian and nonsensical, one wouldn't know where or how to begin.

* * *

AN: okay, so onto replying to reviews which is actually make it look like these chapters have a much longer word count than they actually do.

No0onat: Oh no, I was actually speculating on the fact I could've had a really plot twist but then I was all, no because other people have talked to Haru now anyone and wouldn't make any sense. Believe me, I'm cruel but I'm not that cruel. Yeah, I like brainstorm plot twists for literally everything I write. I'm like even if my writing is not very good, if I have a good plot twist it will be the best book ever. And my exams were a load of butt. I didn't revise very well I just went over everything the night before and strolled into school the next morning looking like a nervous wreck and being like, I will write words down and never think about this ever again.

Ern Estine 13624: Merci beaucoup!

ChibiDhamar: Thank you so much you made my day! I'm always really self concious of my writing so when I get compliments like this it makes me feel really happy.

Naanase: Yes, I find that a lot of the stuff I write about/add are things from my own personal experience with my own illness. I have generalised anxiety, and I also have done tests which suggest paranoid personality as well histrionic, but I'm under 18 and can't be diagnosed with personality disorders. Thanks. I read that autism and schizophrenia are closely linked so I just kind of used inspiration from that dialogue as well because I have an autistic brother (and am being tested for autism at the moment). Don't worry, that's not the plot-twist. I may be a bitch but I'm not a heartless bitch.

ThatAwkwardUnicorn: Thank you. I ship Haru and Rin a lot too, they're my OTP on free.

ElykaEvelyn: Oh god, biology. I had my biology exam recently, it was actually pretty easy though. Thank you. Unfortuantely, this chapter is kind of angsty. It really difficult to write mentally ill characters, so it's kind of like, try and write them doing things that unexpected, fitting within the illness itself and their own personality.

LinkinBizkit: Thank you, don't worry about not leaving a meaty review, any response I get to my work is really appreciated. Mostly because it keeps me from forgetting about it in general, which I tend to do. And don't worry. I know what that's like, I hope you're feeling better soon.

Vania: Thank you! Oh, it's good to know you're doing well with coping. And ta-dah! this was the chapter, annoyingly late as it was.

Hope: Yep, I'll be trying! Thank you!

TheOneAnimeNut: Thanks. A lot of errors about cultural things or structural things within dialouge are actually intended to be this way as they are usually being discussed by characters who have extreme mental illnesses and so don't understand or don't care about the way they should or shouldn't be talking. Also, in terms of POV, I do write slightly differently for fanfics, usually there's a tiny paragraph at the end or somewhere which is a little bit more about how Haru feels or something rather than Rin as I know how sometimes you just really want a POV of a certain character when you read a fanfic. I was originally going to write this mainly from Haru's POV but it was far too difficult and I also thought that Rin would be more relatable for most readers. However, just for fun, I will change POV for other to enjoy and just get some perspective, outside of this I wouldn't really do that. It's just so people can get inside Haru's head a little bit. To be honest, this isn't very well structured in terms of setting. I'm actually Welsh and live here in Wales so this is pretty much like a load of Japanese people acting like British people, in an almost British hospital. it's pretty much all British procedure except for the fact that I couldn't find information about the NHS using hypnotherapy for repressed memories and money wouldn't be involved when someone was put on a psychiatric ward in an NHS hospital. yeah, judge me and how lazy I am. In terms of imagery, I would say that's my greatest strength when it comes to writing. There's actually a very odd reason for this as well. I have sensory issues, hypersensitivity, which causes me to be hyper aware of everything, including sounds, smells, textures, etc etc. And I've often found that my own quite odd nitpicking of the way things are in real life has caused me to have very strange, very vivid images when I write.


	10. We Are, by Nature, Social Beings

AN: So my exams are pretty much over for now. I've been working on this chapter during revision breaks so it's kind of choppy and awkward and doesn't really have a lot of plot. It's mostly just filler and heavily dialogue based.

* * *

It was Saturday, and Rin was looking out the windows. It was sunny. Low down, he could see people outside the hospital. Sometimes, people would walk staring at the ground. Other times, he could see someone holding someone up, back straight, looking at whoever they were supporting. It was impossible to really see whether people were laughing or crying from this distance. You had to guess from whether their head was tipped back toward the sunlight, or if their head was hung low and their eyes boring into the concrete ground of the car park.

"What are you looking at?" Haruka asked.

"The outside world. It's sunny today."

"What is today?"

"It's… Saturday. It's my second week here. Or third?"

"Makoto always comes during weekends."

"He comes on weekdays too, sometimes."

"He only started doing that when you arrived."

"Really?" Rin asked. Haruka hummed a "yes" of sorts.

* * *

The food they had for lunch was boring, salad sandwiches. Someone threw their sandwich across the room and then someone started screaming. It was Rei, who had started screaming. It was something to do with sandwiches landing "butter-side-up" with two slices of tomatoes in them representing the closeness of demons.

"Demons, huh?" Rin huffed.

"Last month, it was ghosts," Haruka replied, squishing the processed nurtrition bar in his palm.

"What does that thing taste like anyway?" Rin asked, gesturing to the bar itself. Haruka looked at the grey bar and then pulled a piece of it off. Rin looked at the piece.

"I washed my hands."

"Right," Rin replied, taking the tiny piece from between Haruka's fingers. He placed the food in his mouth. It was chewy, it tasted like carboard. There was a disgusting medical aftertaste. Rin grabbed his cup and chugged a mouth full of water down to wash the taste away.

"That's gross! How do you eat that?"

"I chew it and swallow it," Haruka replied, matter-of-factly. Rin decided not to tell him that it had been a rhetorical question.

This lunchtime, more tables were empty. For example, Ai was nowhere to be seen.

"A lot of people get day-outs."

"Point system?"

"Yep."

* * *

Rin and Haruka had ended up in the common room again. Haruka was doodling in a book, Rin was not sure whether it was sketch book or a book that belonged to the hospital. He didn't question it. Rin was reading more of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', but the language was just a little bit too difficult for him.

"Still reading 'Dorian Gray'?"

Rin looked up and saw Makoto standing opposite him, a table in between them.

"Well sort of, the wordings more confusing. I don't think I get it."

"Older stuff is harder to read. Which part are you at?"

"I think that Dorian is in love with a girl called… Sibyl."

"Oh, yeah, that's pretty early on. What chapter are you on?"

"Chapter four. This book is kind of slow paced."

"Yeah, a lot of the classics are like that. Are you really sure you want to read a book like this?"

"Are you saying I'm stupid?"

"No! It's just... it just might not be your sort of story, it might not be your sort of interest."

"Well there aren't any other books here… that are interesting to me."

"I could bring you a book next week. What are your interests?"

"Stuff like 'Twilight'," Haruka said. Makoto pressed his hand against his mouth.

"That's total bullshit!"

"You stare at 'Twilight' every time we come in here."

"Shut up! I hate 'Twilight' I only watched the first movie because my sister dragged me along to see it!"

"There's nothing wrong with liking 'Twilight', I think."

"Yeah, what Haru said," Makoto added in between stifled laughter.

"Oh my god! Stop making fun of me," Rin groaned, burying his head in his arms.

* * *

The canteen was as full as it always was when dinner came around. Rin noticed that Makoto was volunteering for longer than usual as he noticed he was helping the cooks to prepare the food.

"I wasn't making fun of you earlier," Rin turned round and noticed Haruka was staring at him.

"It's fine. I guess it's pretty silly, I mean 'Twilight' is basically about this girl who moves to this small town to live with her dad and she falls in love with a vampire, who sparkles, and then they find out she's really important because the vampire can't read her mind and then they fall in love. But then Edward has to leave her this one time for her own safety but there are these other vampires that don't like Bella and so this guy Jacob swoops in but then it turns out he has a crush on her, so she has to choose between him and Edward…" Rin rambled on and on, explaining, as briefly as he could, a summary of the entirety of the 'Twilight' saga.

"So that all happened in one movie? And you… liked it?"

"…I didn't like it and okay so maybe I've seen more than just one movie… and read the novella that was released when the film for 'Eclipse' came out… and also read all the other books."

Haruka bit the inside of his cheek.

"Don't laugh at me!"

"I-I'm not laughing at you," Haruka said, pausing every few seconds.

"Yes, you are. Well, you think it's funny that I read 'Twilight'."

"I think it's funny that you're so insistent that you didn't like it when you obviously love it."

"Some people read and watch things that are bad because they're so bad they're funny."

"I have a feeling they wouldn't tear up when explaining the plot, or buy unnecessary side books."

"…I will literally throw my soup on you if you say one more thing about this."

"About what?" Rin looked up to see Makoto had sat with them, holding a tray of food he had gotten from the kitchen.

"Rin's obsessed with 'Twilight'."

"God damn it, Haruka!"

* * *

"I can't believe you like something so lame," Haruka said as he and Rin walked down the corridor.

"Can we please stop talking about this?" Rin whined, shifting his pillow under his arm. They walked in silence for a few paces. Then Rin remembered the week before.

"Hey, Haruka?" Rin called, Haruka hummed at him. "Where were you this time last week?"

"Hospital."

"Aren't we in a hospital, right now?" Rin pushed the door open and held it open so Haruka could walk past.

"Yes, I had to go to a bigger one for a test though."

"What sort?"

"They were just doing some blood tests and other things. Medication."

"Right. Weird you'd do that on a Saturday."

"Time doesn't exist, so I suppose it doesn't matter when I get my blood tests done."

"I forget time doesn't exist, it's pretty confusing if it doesn't, though."

"It's more stressful when time exists, more controlled."

* * *

The communal ward was quiet, not even Hanako snored, and no one seemed to be talking to themselves in their sleep. Rin's eyes were red and strained and the ceiling was blurring and clearing in a dizzying cycle. Her rolled around trying to find a more comfortable position. He could hear this awful metallic rattling and these loud footsteps, as though a monster was stomping through the corridors. Every time he tried to sleep, he found himself seeing the scene of the man on the boat. The chains, the anchor, the jump, the splash, the screaming.

When he did fall asleep, somehow, he dreamt that someone had wrapped the chains of the anchor around his neck and had thrown him off the side of the boat. He jolted out of his bed to see the room was pitch black. He looked to the bed next to him, he noticed that Haruka was also awake. Rin stretched his arm out and poked the other boy.

"Yes?" Haruka whispered.

"I- I had a bad dream."

"So?"

"… I don't know. I was looking for some comfort, I guess."

There was silence then Rin could hear rustling and then suddenly he felt his covers lifted up and realised Haruka was planning on sharing a bed with him. Once Haruka had gotten inside the sheets completely, Rin huffed. They were in the middle of summer.

"This wasn't what I had in mind," Rin huffed.

"Do you want me to go?"

"No, you might as well stay."

"Goodnight."

"Night."

* * *

AN: Yeah so that's wasn't exciting. I didn't have a lot of inspiration when I wrote this. I'm also thinking of a doing a long-ass one shot based on 'Teenage Dirtbag' by 'Wheatus' for this pairing. Also, I'm doing an 'In the Flesh' au for MikaSasha (an SNK ship) so yeah, i;m pretty busy with ideas and shite at the moment.

Reviews

StrayDogHowling028: Thanks! I'm one of those awful people who loves psychiatric ward au's and when I realised no one had done one for this pairing, I should do it myself, because I'm a strong independent woman who doesn't wait for nobody! *z-snap*

Ern Estine 13624: Thank you! Sometime, soon-ish, all hell's gonna break loose all up in this fic so that'll be exciting.

ElykaEvelyn: Thanks!

yeahI'mprettyawesome: Thank you! Yeah, when I'm writing for audience I usually end up throwing in like one dramatic thing I never intended to add originally and usually makes the story pretty wild. I actually add a hint of that in during this chapter, but it was really subtle. I think, anyway. And yeah, my exams were pretty crazy, but everyone in my school had trouble too.

No0onat: Thanks! Yeah, I felt like even if I went with that it would be a bit of a cop put really, also it's fairly unrealistic, given the situation and I'm almost certain other people had talked to Haruka so it wouldn't have made any sense even if I had done that. Thanks again, I think I did quite, at this point I don't even care how well I did, I just care about passing. Lol, I think every teenager probably decides that as soon as they get to their actual exams though.

Cornchip: Thank you! That's a really big compliment to me. Thank you so much!

Guest: Thanks!

Emily:  Oh my god! Thank you so much! I have no intention of dropping this story, it's just that I have a horrible habit of doing so. Yep, school is butts though and I hate it but I'm doing pretty well for someone with the worst attendance in the whole school. Lol And I wish you all the same, especially the shipper dreams part.

SailorPlanetMars: I really want to thank you for your review, it was very helpful and I tried to implement your advice during this chapter. I do try to proofread but unfortunately, I am quite bad at it because I have concentration issues. However, once I've finished this work, I plan to deeply proofread the entire thing and make sure it's perfect. Thank you so much on the part about realistic characters/depiction of mental disorders. I suffer from poor mental health and other various issues and I wanted to write something which neither glamorizes or demonizes mental illness. I wanted to write something realistic and true to life. I realise a lot of people have a very skewed image of what mentally ill people are like and I wanted to write something that is relatable for people with mental illnesses but also educational to people without mental illness. Knowing I have achieved this goal is a great comfort for me. However, I don't claim to be an expert on mental illness and don't suffer from any of the particular illnesses mentioned in this fic. However, I do suffer from a lot of the things which are found in these illnesses, so by using my personal experience and using research, I strive to achieve a very real and un-romanticized image of the reality of mental illness. However, people with the illnesses in this fic could probably write the characters a billion times better than I do.

Hope: Thanks! I'm glad to know I'm doing a good job at writing. I don't want to make assumptions but if you are someone who's depressed, I hope things will get better for you.


	11. Profitless Acts are Stamped Out

AN: Hey, guys, sorry this took a while to come out. Fun fact: I also wrote this chapter in less than an hour because I felt motivated but it's actually kind of short, but it's about as short as the other chapters tbh.

* * *

Group therapy, the main course of Mondays. Sometimes they could actually get quite wild, certain people singled out other people in the group through a little vindictive accusation of villainy and sometimes the accused would get riled up. That had happened last week, a girl (named Aya) claimed that a boy (called Daichi) had been _fucking _a girl (called Kasumi) in the girls' toilets. Naturally, Daichi leapt from his chair and grabbed Aya by the hair and started screaming at her and then she started clawing at his eyes with her bitten down nails.

The doctors, actually had to investigate this, given that relationships are prohibited in the ward, and found that the cause of this display was that Aya and Daichi had been in a secret relationship for a while. Kasumi spilled the beans, almost immediately (according to Nagisa anyway). Kasumi had told Daichi he should end his relationship with Aya because of the strict regulations on relationships, as well as the fact that Aya had a tendency to be quite obsessive. Aya saw the two talking but didn't hear the conversation, Aya confessed later on. A few days later, Daichi broke off his relationship with Aya and later thanked Kasumi for the advice. Aya saw the two together again and decided that Kasumi had stolen Daichi out from under her feet and decided to launch a vicious attack on the two at group. _Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned, _Rin thought.

This drama, which had only just come to its conclusion on Sunday afternoon when Aya gave her teary confession to Dr Amakata, was now being relayed to the group this noon.

"And that is why relationships aren't allowed. I know you guys always whine about it, about how you think it would _improve_ your health if you had a boyfriend, or girlfriend, but it won't. Romantic relationships are not magic cures for your illness, if anything they make it worse. In the state you are in now, you're not fit for a relationship, not a healthy one anyway. What happened to Aya, could happen to you. The paranoia, the jealousy, the wrath- all because right now, you're insecure, you're vulnerable, you don't love yourselves. You can't love someone right, until you love yourself. It puts pressure on you and it puts pressure on your partner. Wait, until the right time to start… dating, or whatever. You don't want to be telling people you met your husband in a psychiatric ward. Or maybe you might, it would be a pretty crazy story. No pun intended. Either way, don't start relationships whilst you're here, because it's not the right time."

"Doc, what happens to us if we have a relationship? And get caught?" Nagisa asked, leaning forward with his chin in his hands.

"Well," Sasabe rubbed his chin, "I've always found the consequences a little harsh but the people that run this place are adamant about them. You have to leave, I don't know what happens from that point onwards. I assume people who've been sectioned are relocated and those who are here, voluntarily, have to go home, maybe try and get relocated."

* * *

"Heavy stuff in group today," Rin said to Haruka, who was sat next to him during lunch, as per usual. Haruka nodded.

"So, is it really true that if you're in a relationship you get kicked out?"

"I've seen it happen before."

"Even if you're being sectioned, like me, for example?" Rin insisted. Haruka set down his nutrition bar on the table.

"Rin, what are you planning?"

"I'm not planning anything, I was just curious," Rin exclaimed. A few people in the canteen turned to look at them, Rin's face went red and then he buried his face in his palms.

"I don't know what would happen, except you certainly wouldn't be here anymore. And I don't know if it applies to staff or volunteers. I mean, it does apply to staff or volunteers. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Or maybe it does-" Haruka was stopped mid-sentence through his rambling when Rin put his hand over his mouth. Haruka's eyes widened and he stared intently at Rin's hand.

"Look, Haruka, can I… ask you for a favour?" Rin asked, Haruka looked up and nodded. It was awkward, and a little stuppered because of Rin's hand on his mouth, but a nod was still conveyed. Rin smiled, and removed his hand.

"Um... meet me... in the bathroom, after you're finished eating."

* * *

"Haruka, I was wondering if you…" Rin looked at his feet, his hair falling in front of his face, a blush spreading across his cheeks. Haruka felt his heart rate increase. His heart was beating so loud he could hear it echoing in his ears and he felt sick.

"I was wonder if you would pretend to be my boyfriend," Rin said, sighing once he'd finished his sentence.

There was a stagnant silence that hung over the two boys in the bathroom.

"No."

"What? It's not a real relationship, Haruka! Help me out here, please?"

"Why?"

"I hate it in here! I'm stuck, my mum's paying for this with money she doesn't have, I'm stuck in the loony ward at night, and I haven't had any progress with my hypnotherapy since my first session. Ever since then I've just been seeing the same murky image over and over again in my fucking nightmares, Haruka. I hate it here, I wanna go somewhere far away, where I can just do what I need to do to get on. It's so cramped here! I just… I just want to be-"

"Free?" Haruka took the words out of Rin's mouth. "You won't be, in another hospital. It'll be like this one all over again but you'll be far from home."

"I want to be far from home! I can't stand it around here! In this town, I just want to get away from here."

"I don't want you to. I need you here, with me. You- I can't… it can't happen again."

Rin stopped, and took a deep breath. It wasn't fair to try and drag Haruka into this, or to try and guilt trip him into helping to achieve a hypothetical goal. Especially given that the outcome would affect Haruka as well. Haruka would be kicked out of the hospital too.

"I wasn't sectioned, Rin," Haruka said, he too sounded calmer. "I have nowhere else to go, my family… I'm... I'm alone."

"I- I'm sorry to hear that," Rin stuttered. A few seconds later, Rin realised he had begun to cry. Haruka fetched some toilet roll and practically shoved it into Rin's hands.

"Thanks," Rin sniffled as he took the tissues. He noticed Haruka was still wearing his bracelet.

"Do you remember the first time we met in here?" Rin said.

"Yeah," Haruka replied.

"God, it feels like it was so long ago, but it was only a couple of weeks."

"That's why time doesn't exist. Nothing ever moves at the same pace. It's just a concept someone came up with when they watched the sun for too long."

"I guess you're right," Rin chuckled as he dabbed his eyes with the piece of tissue. Haruka and he stayed quiet for a moment and then Haruka bolted, much to Rin's surprise.

* * *

"Thanks, for earlier," Rin said, as he carried his blankets and pillow with Haruka later that night.

"It's nothing. I'm sorry."

Rin wasn't entirely sure what Haruka was apologising for. Was it for not blinding doing what Rin had asked of him? For making him cry? For running off?

"It's okay," he said and left it at that.

* * *

The ward was not eerily silent but it wasn't insanely loud either. It was at a regular volume, for this specific ward. Rin had started to find the noise level soothing, he would concentrate on that and then he would dream of something other than the man on the boat. Tonight he dreamed of finding the edge of the world, when he lived at the opposite end of it. He found nothing but an ending there. Yet he also found he was perfectly content with that.

Haru, on the other hand, dreamt of the waiting room, and his friend, who always played with the toys the hospital provided in the corner of the room in a box. He remembered his desperate wish that he would just be in that waiting room with his friend forever.

* * *

AN: Okay, so I have a rather personal announcement, but I've made this announcement on every social media I own so, I thought that I might as well tell you guys as well. I've mentioned in replies to reviews that I have mental health issues. Yesterday, I was diagnosed with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder), it was a really big thing for me to finally put a name to this thing I've been struggling with my whole life.

* * *

Reviews:

Ern Estine 13624: Thank you! Yes, I've got a couple of plot twists, coming up, some are more predictable than others. Some are sadder than others.

StrayDogHowling028: I definitely think that it's a more complex and interesting character to right about. Personally speaking, with a lot of people who are very mentally ill it's because of the fact that they have been unable to really mesh into society the way other people can. I feel that writing characters liek this lets you really challenge ideas about what's normal and why we think it's normal.

Xiemna hatake: Will do, I try to update as regularly as I can!

yin: Thanks!


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